The Perfect Storm... er, I Mean Pull

They're discussing The Perfect Pull over at Jinxed Thoughts.

While I probably won't return to tanking for a while - I'd like to pick up healing on laenshield again, first - I do eventually want to tank a bit, so this is definitely going on my "read and remember" list.

Tanks for the advice

Via Righteous Defense, some advice for low-level paladin tanks.

Let me 'splain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

• Get a protection spec.
• Learn how to pull.
• Learn how to build threat.

100% agreement here. When I was leveling Aeven, this pretty what I concentrated on. I got her a prot spec early on, and learned how to use her abilities. I was paranoid about learning how to pull properly, and had a threat meter installed from day 1 so I could see how well I was hitting things int he face with my rusty, jagged hunk of metal.

Now, go read the full article, because the explanation of the difference between "pulling" and "threat" is simultaneously hilarious and disturbing.

Tanking by Accident

As I've said before, I've been killing Coren Direbrew repeatedly for yummy Emblems of Frost and other assorted goodies. Just like every other level 80 out there.

Last night, I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, and instead of queuing Aeven up for Direbrew, I instead queued for a random heroic. I didn't realize what I had done until I phased in to the Oculus.

Understand this: at this point in Aeven's career, I'd used her to tank a whopping 0 (that's zero, folks, nil, nada, zilch) Northrend heroics, and a whopping 0 (again, that's zero) Northrend dungeons at all. Aside from Direbrew, I'd not done any tanking at all for months.

But... this was the Oculus. Easy pulls, plus the final fight is on drakes, even, so that's not even like it's a real fight, right? So I buckled down and did my best. Thanks in very large part to a most excellent healer, and good DPS players, I was able to do a decent enough job. It was a sloppy job in places, definitely. Those stinking whelps in the first pulls are annoying as all get out. There were points where I was mashing buttons frantically, though, trying to re-teach my fingers how to handle Aeven's abilities. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I ran the whole thing without any auras up at all. Bleah.

Still, we made it through to Eregos without loosing anyone.

Oddly enough, this was the tough fight - I was on a red drake to start with, and Eregos kicked my red little butt all over the map without much of a thought. We wiped, and on the way back, I mentioned that I was used to healing... and the healer suggested swapping roles, so that he (with his mondo health pool and stats) could tank while I healed.

Bingo! Took a while, but after a few minutes, there was one dead internet dragon, and Aeven had her first Emblems of Triumph and Stone Keeper's Shards. As a side effect, I find that I'm not nearly as worried about tanking heroics as I was when Aeven dinged 80... so I may run a few more with her in the next couple of months, just to get a feel for tanking as we head into Cata.

The Secret of Tanking

Here, let me just quote BBB and cut to the chase:

It doesn’t sound all that hard, does it?

That’s the secret. It’s not.

Go on. Read it. If you're here because you want to find out if you can tank Ragefire Chasm, or because you're wondering if you can handle Sunken Temple or Hellfire Ramparts or any of a number of other dungeons... head on over to BBB and see what he means when he tells you the Truth about Tanking: it's not all that hard.

Not to say that it's easy. Or that you won't be nervous or intimidated the first couple of times you tank. Or that you won't make mistakes. When it's all said and done, though, and you're standing over the final boss in RFC or Deadmines or Ramps, looking around, you'll realize that it was scary at times, fun at times, and overall...

... it wasn't all that hard.

North

It was a busy weekend, both IRL and in-game. My wife and I celebrated our 18th anniversary by heading west and taking a little road trip on Monday. Aeven celebrated reaching level 70 by heading north, looking for new lands to explore and new foes to smite. For the light, of course!

On Friday, I took Aeven to Shadowmoon Valley, where the questing was... different. If I had to guess, I'd say that there were at least two different teams at Blizzard doing quest design for zones. One of those teams (Zangarmarsh, Nagrand) seems to like short, co-existant quest chains. In those areas, you can fill up your quest log and run around the zone like a madman, sometimes killing one mob and getting credit for three different quests. The other team (Shadowmoon Valley) likes long, epic questlines that take you across the zone and back multiple times. Questlines where each piece needs to be done in order, just so you can run across the zone again... and again... and again, like some sort of deranged bicycle messenger, just to accomplish one task.

I'll give you three guesses as to which one I like more.

I did a couple of the shorted quest chains and solo quests in Shadowmoon Valley, but pretty quickly realized that I was going to be there a while, doing epic quests to forge the Staff of Foobar and the like. Stuff that is interesting, sure, but which I'd already done once before... and I wasn't really interested in re-reading those novels.

So Aeven looked around, called it finished, packed her bags and headed off to Netherstorm to finish things up. That zone follows the "lots of little quests" philosophy, and there was plenty to do. A quick flight around the area, and she had a quest log full of nice little XP-bearing jobs just waiting to bloom.

In an odd twist of fate, though, that prooved to be entirely unnecessary. Logging in on Monday night, I found a couple of guildmates who were leveling alts, and who were interested in running some BC dungeons. Another guildmate offered to come along and heal, we used the LFD tool to pick up a random DPS, and an hour or so later, we had plowed through the Slave Pens and the Mana Tombs... with Aeven hitting level 70 just before Nexus-Prince Shaffar. I was keeping an eye on her XP bar, and she was literally one experience point shy of hitting 70 when we hit the top of the stairs before Shaffar. It would have been nice to have my level 70 ding come from the prince himself, but that extra level before hand was nice, too. So we'll just call it even, shall we?

Hearth to Dalaran. Portal to Ironforge. Train a bunch of new abilities for both retribution and protection. Empty bags of a bunch of lower-level potions and food, and hit the aution house to grab a couple of stacks of Runic Mana Potions and Runic Healing Potions, as well as some level 70 battle and guardian elixirs. Take a deep breath, hop on the griffon, and head for the Stormwind piers. Get there, realize that the Stormwind boat goes to the Borean Tundra, and mutter curses at myself for forgetting that I needed to go to Menethil Harbor if I wanted to catach a ride to Howling Fjord. Head back to Ironforge, pop over to Menethil Harbor, finally board the boat for Howling Fjord... and get disconnected during the trip, so that when I log back in a few seconds later, I'm 20,000 feet in the air over the Hillsbrad Foothills. On my charger. Plunge to my death, rez at the spirit healer, fly back to Menethil Harbor, jump on the boat again. Huddle, unmounted, in the center of the ship. Nope, no insane little Dwarven pally here, no no no. Just some... cargo. Yeah, cargo. Heading north. Nothing worth smiting here, no, not at all!

Then, finally, she stepped off the boat in Northrend. Gorgeous scenery, beautiful background music, and within a minute of her arrival, she was at the gates of an Alliance fortification surrounded by slavering worgs who thought she was a new chew toy and and gigantic humanoids who thought she was some sort of pinata. You know... you know... the Aliance recruiting brochures don't nearly do Northrend justice. If she had know it was going to be this much fun, she would have headed here two levels ago.

Along the way, Aeven picked up a few minor upgrades. She's sporting a Deteriorating Plate Chestpiece and Deteriorating Plate Boots now. She had a matching belt to go along with them, but ditched that as soon as she hit Northrend, in favor of a shiny new Heavy Aldor Belt. She'll be replacing her bracers and breastplate as well (with Heavy Draenic Bracers and a Heavy Draenic Breastplate) as soon as she can get scrolls to enchant them.

Tonight: raining death and destruction on the Vrykul! Presuming, of course, that you're talking about some sort of magical rain that falls up from the ground. And really only reaches their kneecaps. And which is made of sharp, nasty pummeling death instead of, um, rain. So, ok, yeah, it's going to be less like walking through a gentle summer shower and more like jamming their foot into a titchy cuisinart with a taste for blood.

Whatever it is, it'll be fun :-)

Dub-a-dub

Rub-a-dub, five players in a... hmm, not tub. Really, it was more of a spiky dark fortress filled with fel orcs and other unsavory creatures.

Yep! Aeven ran her first BC dungeon last night: Hellfire Ramparts. I queued her up when she was about 50k short of level 68, and went on questing in Terokkar, figuring that I'd either get the instance, or I'd level and try for the Blood Furnace. Tuns out that if you ding while you're in the queue, you stay in the queue... so even though I hit 68, I was able to get into a group for Ramparts. Nice!

I did my usual opening spiel with the group, with no immediate responses... except from another pally, who told us "I'll be there in a minute, go ahead and start without me." OK. Buffs all around, and when I checked again to see if anyone had any objections, one of the other guys essentially said "Haven't decided yet... go ahead and pull and we'll see."

Well, now. Let's see, indeed... so I went ahead and pulled the first group.

Then the second.

Then the third, and the fourth, and... you get the idea.

Twenty minutes later, we were standing over the body of a dead dragon :-) No deaths, no real aggro problems. Well, there were some pulls where the trash mobs were so numerous that the other DPS ended up pulling aggro off of me - but seeins as they were a DK, another pally, and a rogue, they were pretty much capable of handling single mobs, so I didn't worry about that too much. I was particularly proud of doing the one tricky pull the right way - the corner where there's about a dozen mobs around the bend, and you really need to do an LOS pull to get them bunched up.

Just after that, the other pally who joined late said "Dude! You're all in white gear!"... at which point the other folks laughed, and explained that was what I told them at the start. A few mobs later, I managed to loot a Tarnished Plate Chestpiece, and they all congratualted me on the gear upgrade. All in all, a very nice run. I wish I had gotten everyone's names, but for the record, I'll call out Talfurn of Stormrage and Omega of Destromath as particularly encouraging folks. (I'd link Omega, but he's got a twidle over the last 'a' in his name, and I'm not sure which twiddle it is.)

The chestpiece? I was really excited about that. First time in a long while that I've really been excited about a gear upgrade. I tried it on, checked out Aeven to see how it looked, put on the old chestpiece to compare stats, then sold the chestpiece in my bags and logged out to get my enchanted to whomp me up a scroll to enchant my new armor.

Logged back in, and... yep. You guessed it. I had forgotten to swap the chestpieces back out, and had sold the tarnished plate to the vendor. And, of course, since I had logged out afterwards, I couldn't buy it back, either. Grumble. Ah, well. It was a hundred armor or so, and changing out 150 health for 22 defense rating. I can live without it for the next two levels until I can buy her a Heavy Draenic Breastplate, I guess.

New Policy

In light of the rather emphatic response I received from a LFD member last night in response to my "Hey, I'm leveling in whites, let me know if you'd rather find a different tank", I've changed my LFD intro message slightly. It now asks that people let me know, politely, if they'd rather find a different tank.

I realize that this is my failing - my last message did not actually request that individuals demonstrate a minimum acceptable level of maturity and civility. I know, I know. Silly of me. Hence the new message, and the new policy:

Failure to treat me politely at the start of the instance will result in my chain-pulling as many mobs as I can before I bubble hearth.

Well... no. That's a bit too rude, I think, even for the wonderful response I got last night. It was only one person, after all. The other folks didn't say anything, positive or negative (and, I'll note that the individual in question didn't even bother to speak up until after I had buffed everyone. Classy guy.) I really should have polled everyone and seen if the other members felt the same way before I decided whether or not to bail. Yeah, that would have been a better option.

So, call this a provisional policy. Unless I encounter an entire group of overwhelmingly rude induhviduals, I don't think I'll actually do anything like the pull/bubble hearth punishment.

No matter how much they desperately deserve it.

Yet Another PuG Story

A few days ago, I had an amazingly good and patient PuG for BRD (Prison).

What made it great? Patient people. Mature people.

People who didn't comment on my "I'm intentionally undergeared" message, but who all held back a few seconds to let Aeven grab aggro good and tight before they unloaded with theirAoE.

People who knew the instance, knew where they wanted to go, and asked instead of demanding that we do the extra bosses.

People who didn't start complaining or quit after we wiped (thanks to my misunderstanding of how to handle a pull).

People who all ran back after that wipe, with the exception of one fellow who'd never been in BRD before and got lost trying to find the instance portal.

People who waited for said lost soul, and then patiently described how to find the dungeon entrance.

People who, when said lost soul still managed to stay lost, backtracked and searched the dungeon until they found his body so he could be resurrected.

People who, when said lost soul was finally back with us, told him "np, Thanks for coming!" when he said he had to leave before we made it back to the next group of mobs.

People who thanked me for being a good tank... not because I was doing a tremendously good job at tanking, but because I didn't yell at them or berate them (yeah, I know - what a concept, eh?)

You know what else was interesting? In chat, they were using names. I didn't realize this at the time, but looking back, I can see that Mimetir's comments on the issue were spot on. There was basic common courtesy present, and it showed.

So, while I am reluctant to call out someone from a fail PuG - everyone has their bad days, after all - I have no problem in identifying the individuals who made this PuG one that was full of win. People like:

• Sult, of Alleria
• Norinradd, of Ravencrest
• Ravyne, of Alleria
• Thunderfk, of Hellscream

If you're int he Rampage battle group, and happen to end up with one of these fine folks in your party, do say hello, and let them know that their good reputation precedes them :-)

I'm starting to this that there's a positive correlation between maturity and ability. I'm not saying there's a causual relationship, mind you. I've run into mature players who definitely weren't the best, and I've run into jerk players who definitely were top players. But generally, it seems to me that "mature, patient, considerate" generally equals "capable player". While "childish, impatient, rude" generally equals "bad player".

Overall, though, it seems like the first few minutes of a PuG helps sets the tone. I'm going to add that to my list of "things to do while tanking" (well, while running in any PuG, really). Say hello, welcome people by name, and ask if there's anything special that they'd like to do when we run the instance. I'm sure that I'll still encounter fail PuGs, but hopefully, that little bit of civility will help nudge things in a non-fail direction.

The First Rule of Fail PuG...

"The first rule of Fail PuG is, you must talk about Fail PuG."
"The second rule of Fail PuG is, you MUST talk about Fail PuG."

Who am I to ignore the rules? Listen, then...


Just about 1k experience short of making level 56, I queued up for Sunken Temple in the LFD tool. Apparently there aren't that many people interested in running ST, so even queued as a tank, it was a bit of a wait. After a while, though, I found myself in a group consisting of Aeven, two hunters and their pets, an elemental shaman and a druid.


I switched Aeven over to her tanking spec, drank up, and tossed off some buffs. Then I warned them, up front, that someone else would have to guide us through the instance. If this seems like a familiar litany of mine, then you'd be absolutely correct. I've run old world and BC dungeons enough that I'm vaguely familiar with most of them, but I'm more than willing to admit the rats nest that is Sunken Temple makes my brain hurt.


Within the first few mobs, Aeven picked up enough experience to hit level 56. Nice! I had gotten into Sunken Temple just under the wire, just before the LFD tool would not let me queue her for the instance. But I was there now, and hey - it's an old world instance, right? How hard could it be, really?


It didn't take long to see the warning signs of Fail PuG. One of the hunters was rolling need on everything. Not a big deal to me - greens and blues are just gold, and I was there to run the dungeon, not find new shinies. It was a point of contention to the other players, though. "Why are you rolling need on everything?" No answer. The druid was our healer, but seemed to spend more time in cat form then actually healing. Well, OK - I've healed as shadow spec on my priest before, when we obviously overgeared the instance and just tossing out a heal every once in a while was deadly dull.


With the shaman guiding us, though, we made our way to the upper ring of the temple. It was there that things started falling apart. "We should all tank everything," said one of the hunters in party chat. I said nothing. And indeed, there were soon bears, cats, and diminutive dwarven death machines running hither and yon. I did my best to hold aggro, but - to my shame - I had forgotten to turn on Righteous Fury, and didn't realize that until it was pointed out to me later. So lest you think that I am just the chronicler of fail in this case, know that I did in fact contribute to the level of Fail we expereinced. A minor contribution, to be sure, but there none the less.


After the second mini-boss, the shaman ran off, unnoticed, to find the next target. By the time I realized she had gone, we tried to follow her, and - lacking our guide - ended up on the lower level of the instance. Yeah, I know. How amazingly hard would it have been to just continue on the path and join up with her? Apparently, too hard for our four feeble brains. We ended up at the instance portal before we realized how mixed up we were, and the shammy soon dropped group in disgust.

One of the hunters says, "pass me lead." I think about it a second, figure that he probably has a friend to invite or something, and pass him the group lead. If he wants that position, it's fine by me - he can't have a worse idea of how to navigate the instance than I do. There's really no real benefit to being group lead, so if he wanted it, well, that was find by me. I'd classify this as my second shame. I was just interested in running the dungeon, but really, I should have stepped in and filled the role of the dungeon leader, whatever that meant. Instead, I sloughed it off and let someone else take up the minimal responsibilities.

We re-entered the LFD queue, and quickly picked up a priest - apparently, when the time came to re-queue, the druid decided that he'd just go full-out feral and registered as dps along with the hunters. Well, OK - we still had three dps, and now we had a real healer with us.

"Hey guys, first time healing, hope that's OK," said Priestly Guy.

"No problem," I answered. I was actually kind of excited. Here we are, in an old world instance, with what seemed like a nice guy trying to learn the ropes of his class. Stepping out of his comfort zone, getting ready to experience an entirely new aspect of the game, and... what?

"A vote to kick Priestly Guy has been initiated."

Before I couild even respond, bam! Priestly Guy was gone. Oh-kaaay. Here then is my third shame: I said nothing. Looking back on it, I should have just dropped group. Vote kicking someone for, say, rolling need on things they can't use? Apparently not. Vote kicking the healer because he's never healed in a dungeon before? Apparently, that's perfectly reasonable.

So, sans healer, the two hunters start pulling again. I shrug my shoulders, and rather than drop group - which would mean having to put together a ST dungeon run by hand, now that I can't use the LFD tool - I just go with the flow and follow along. At this point, one of the folks (the druid, IIRC) chimes in:

"hey aeven what with ur gear?"

Oh, joy. Text speak. I explain that it's intentional, and that I'm leveling and learning to tank using only vendor-bought gear as an experiment.

"aeven ur an idiot"

Sigh. I respond, saying something like, "Yes, the evidence seems to point to that inevitable conclusion." I choose not to mention that I am not refering to my gear - the fact that Aeven is level 56 should, I think, speak for itself - but to my continuing association with the current group of uncouth, over-caffeinated twitch-boys.

By the time we end up overlooking the pit full of dragonkin that will eventually lead to Eranikus, the druid has dropped group, leaving me with the two loot-happy hunters. Well, with their pets, we still have five in the party, right? At least, that's what I tried to tell myself. "Aeven, you can heal, right?" they ask, and I tell them sure, I'm not spec'd for it, but I can try. So they jump down into the pit, I follow... and land in the middle of a group of whelps and dragonkin. They go running off to pull another group, leaving me there wondering where they are, what's going on, and ooh, look, isn't that a cute little whelp that's gnawing my leg off at the knee?

I die.

By the time I make my way back to the instance, the two hunters have - not surprisingly - also perished, since they lacked a healer. And a tank. And anything approaching decent dps. At which point, they drop group, leaving my ghost at the entrance to the Sunken Temple.

So now I've died, I've lost my group, I've lost my easiest chance to run Sunken Temple, and my indifference has contributed to all of the above.

Wheh. OK, time for lessons learned.

1. Before I head into an instance, I'm going to read up on it, and get out of the "someone else tell me where to go" mentality. I'll know where to go - generally, if not specifically. I'll know what to watch out for, and make sure that I know enough to get everyone (Aeven included) through the instance successfully.
2. I took Aeven into the instance essentially unbuffed - no defense potions, no strength elixirs, no food buffs, no other non-class related buffs. Bascially, I've gotten lazy, thanks to the ease of leveling as retribution. Now that she's heading into end-game vanilla content and introductory BC content, I need to make sure that Aeven is as ready as she can possibly be if I want her to do a good job as a tank.
3. I'm going to put together a macro that explains my gear choices to the party, and hit it on joining an instance. I don't have a problem with dropping group if people think that Aeven isn't capable of tanking a particular instance. Being forthright from the start will save us all some trouble if Aeven's gear will be an impediment (actual or perceived).
4. I'm going to (finally) put together a tanking macro for Aeven that consolidates her emergency taunt abilities, so she can grab and keep aggro, even in the face of hunter pets running amok.
5. I'm going to set and adhere to personal standards of behavior. Incivility - rolling need on everything, vote-kicking someone for no reason, foul language or rudeness - will be addressed by me. I won't wait for someone else to be the adult. If the situation isn't corrected, or isn't correctable, then sorry. The group will loose their tank.

Late in the afternoon, and all is well

I didn't have nearly as much time to play as I thought I would over the weekend; despite that, I still managed to get Aeven to level 53. Along the way, she got to Run Marudon (purple) and Zul'farrak. Both went well - the only comment about her gear was from one of the folks running ZF, and that quickly turned into a "pallies are OP" discussion.

What with one thing and another, Aeven - fully buffed, including buffs from other players in the parties - managed to pull just slightly over 150 dps through those two instances. She did a lot better on the trash, thanks to her AoE abilities; but still, it seems as if her damage output and her threat are perfectly respectable, especially after she hit level 52 and had the extra talent point to spare to learn Holy Shield.

Then I dropped 1000 gold for Dual Talent Specialization and Aeven became a Protection/Retribution paladin... and I learned what real paladin dps is like.

The first mob I hit after switching over to retribution, I honestly was confused at what was happening. Why did he fall over so quickly? Did I somehow pick up a low-level mob or something? Wait... what are all those buff icons for? Vengeance? The Art of War? What happened? Oh, yeah, those are my talents, now - cool! Let's see how much that helped me out... and Skada says...

Whoa.

200+ dps.

Whoa.

And that's before I remembered to turn on Retribution Aura.

Yoi and double yoi!

And no, I'm not exaggerating. My normal single-mob attack pattern is to hit them with a Hand of Reckoning, follow that with an Exorcism, and then whatever judgement is suitable... then auto attack until I can judge again, 8 seconds later. For tough mobs, or when the RNG was being unhappy with me, I'd have to maybe throw down a third judgement, and maybe another exorcism, and cap it all off with a Hammer of Wrath. So, say, roughly 25-30 seconds to down a same-level mob, all told.

With her full-on Retribution spec, Aeven's nailing same-level mobs with enough damage that the initial salvo of HoR, Exorcism, and judgement are taking mobs all the way down to 30% damage or so. A few auto attacks, and before I can toss of another judgment, I can let loose with HoW and finish them off. All done in around 8-10 seconds, depending on whether or not I can instant-cast Exorcism due to an Art of War proc.

Yep. Our little lady is almost literally three times as good at killing things now. She makes me proud, she does! Aeven is now entire capable of plowing through appropriate level mobs like... well, like a very sharp thing that cuts very flimsy things. You know what I mean. She's still sporting a simple 1H weapon and shield, too - hopefully upgrading to a real 2H weapon with a decent enchant will increase her dps even further.

As advertised, there will probably be little Aeven news this week - at least, not until I manage to finish of School of Hard Knocks on my main. I've heard everything from "oh, man, that was the worst time in my life" to "wow, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be." In any case, it seems like it's better to get in early and try to get the battleground achievements, so that's just what I'm going to do this week... though I'll be trying to do it as quickly as possible, so I can get back to Aeven as she pushes on towards the magical level 60.

Tanking in Cataclysm

This piece by Dawn Moore over at WoW.com was pretty interesting. One bit of her advice from the column, and in fact, pretty much the point of the column:

Step 1: Go to the auction house.
Step 2: Buy 150-175 item level gear.
Step 3: Queue for random dungeons.
Step 4: Learn how to heal again. (Alternatively: pull out your hair.)

One of my level 80 characters is a Dwarven priest - he's, well, my healing main? My main alt? My alt main? Whatever! He's fun to play, and I've had a blast learning to heal in instances. I got him up to speed and geared out by starting off doing heroic dungeons in quest reward greens, and using the LFD tool to run heroics over... and over... and over. So I started learning how to heal very much in the way that Ms. Moore suggested, with just enough oomph to make me think, plan, and actually learn how all my abilities work.

After reading this this morning, I realized that Aeven is teaching me how to tank for Cataclysm. We've already been told by Blizzard that they want to iron out the spiky boss damage, and make it so that being at less than fully health doesn't mean instant death.

That's pretty much the definition of old-world dungeons, isn't it? I mean, here I am, with my little Dwarven dealer in death and destruction, and she's spending a good part of her fights in instances at less than full health... but it doesn't really matter too much, because she can take a beating for a while before it's critical. Even with the armor and mitigation she's got now, chances are she's not going to be on the wrong end of a one-shot killing blow from an instance boss. I can spend less time worrying about my status and more worrying about the way the fight is going.

Especially since so many more old-world dungeon bosses come with adds. I mean, I know there are bosses with adds in WotLK, but it seems like every boss in the old world has a couple of flunkys to keep things interesting. Reacting to the fight to stun or snare or taunt back an add is a whole lot more fun than just waiting for the Big Bad to start using special ability A.

The more I think of the dungeon runs I've done with Aeven, the more I think "Yeah, this is what they want it to be like in Cata." Maybe a little bit harder (ok, ok - maybe a lot harder), but a lot more loose, a lot more chaotic. More situational choices and less "this is the strat, deviate from it and die." Something that's very different from the fights we've seen in WotLK.

I'm starting to think that I'm really going to enjoy Cataclysm when it comes out.

Screeching Halt

That's pretty much how my play time ended last night.

Oh, I was having a good time - ran through Uldaman twice, with two different groups. Oddly enough, both times, someone commented on my gear, or lack thereof... the first time that that's ever happened, at all, ever, in a PuG or otherwise.

"Aeven? Why are you in grey gear?"

I was feeling a little bit nervous when I answered both queries... Well, one, I'm in white gear, thank you very much; and two, it may be white, but it is enchanted, at least. I think it's the last that got me the questions. I imagine it's one thing to see someone in "scrub" gear, another to see someone dressed out in vendor gear and sporting expensive enchantments.

Fortunately, in both cases, when I let the other folks in the group know that yes, this was intentional, they must have just shrugged their shoulders, because that was the only commentary I heard that night. No worries about whether or not I could tank, no concerns over dps, nothing, nada, zip. Well, a "lol gl with that" from one of the players in the second PuG. Just two pretty fun runs through an interesting dungeon.

Then, like I said, it all came to a screeching halt.

Not for any RL issues, thankfully - no sick kids, hurt pets, or anything like that. Not for any in-game issues, either. With a couple of notable exceptions, I think that just about everybody I've encountered in-game as part of a PuG or while questing has been, at worst, indifferent to the little Dwarven killing machine in their midst. I even got a couple of "thank you"s from random folks who were happy to find a female Dwarf during Nobelgarden for one of their achievements.

In fact, it was the game itself that stopped my progress. Specifically: it was the LFD tool.

So far, I've used the LFD tool to pick up all my dungeon-running groups. It's amazingly useful, and using it has meant that I've been able to avoid spamming "tank lfg deadmines pst" over and over in trade chat. All in all, it's been a wonderful tool.

Like all tools, though, it has it's limitations. Because I'm very reluctant to impose Aeven on a group in a place where she might be a liability, I've avoided using the LFD tool to run random dungeons; the sole exception there was "in the beginning", when RFC and Deadmines were the only things available to her. It's really not much of a "random dungeon" when your choices are Ragefire Chasm, Ragefire Chasm, and Ragefire Chasm, is it?

So instead of running randoms, I've been using the LFD tool to select the dungeons for Aeven to run. I've generally tried to make sure that I'm only queuing Aeven up for "green" dungeons - instances where she's at the top of the suggested level range. That way, even if she ends up in a group of higher-level characters, she'll still be able to tank, hold aggro and generally contribute.

Here's the problem: the LFD tool doesn't just impose a minimum level ("You must be at lease level 35 to enter this instance.") It also imposes a maximum level cap. That means that if, say, the maximum level for a dungeon is listed as 45, and you're level 46, then you simply can't use the LFD tool to collect a party from multiple servers and go go go. Instead, you're limited to players from your server, you have to find them yourself, and then you need to deal with the inevitable "Let me know when you have three others and I'll join" responses from folks who never bother to show up.

So, after the last Uldaman run, I was heading back to Ironforge to turn in a couple of quests when I noticed that Aeven was about 10K experience shy of making level 46. Wonderful! New skills! Another talent point! Another... wait... hold on...

Crud. The Scarlet Monastery - Cathedral has a max level of 45 in the LFD tool. If I turn in these quests, then it's goodbye quick group for SM:C, hello painful by-hand group assembly.

Yeah, yeah. I know. You used to have to do this all the time. In fact, back in Vanilla WoW, they would only let you group up for Deadmines if you were currently standing in a pile of snow, shivering and catching pneumonia while a rabid squirrel was gnawing off your nose. And you liked it. That was then, this is now, and I'd rather avoid the whole rabid squirrel thing if I can, ya know?

Why in the world did Blizzard do this? I've lost track of the number of times I've gone back to run a "low level" dungeon. You get involved with questing, and before you know it, you're level 47 and you've never gotten around to running Razorfen Downs. You'd really like to, if only because you have half a dozen quests that you want to finish off. Sure, they're green, but that's still a pretty good chunk of XP. Two days ago, you could have queued up for RFD and finished it off in under an hour. Now, it'll take you that long to just find a tank or a healer.

Now, imagine that the LFD interface could be adjusted to allow you to select any lower-level instance... but if you pick something outside of your level range, it starts adjusting the party composition. Here's how I think it could work. Let's consider the Amazing Dungeon of Doom (a very fast level 25-35 instance).

If you're in the "right" range for the dungeon, you get grouped with four other level 26-35 folks. This is essentially just how the LFD tool works now. If you're in the next level range (36-45), then you can queue up with other people in that level range... but you're only allowed to have 4 people in the party. The next level range after that (46-55) reduces the number of party members to 3. Random dungeons would always be "level appropriate", you'd just be able to select specific dungeons from a much larger list, and run them at a slight handicap.

I can't see going any further than that - if you really want to run dungeons 20 levels lower than you are, then you can hop on your magical sparkle pony and haul your own sorry butt out to Where The Wild Things Are. But for folks just a bit higher level than the dungeon's max level, it would help keep the LFD tool useful for a longer period of time.

So... LFD tool whining aside, I haven't run SM:C yet. I really want to get Aeven all the old-world dungeon achievements, if I can, so she can get the Classic Dungeonmaster meta-achievement. So rather than picking up that extra level, I called it a night and logged out immediately. Literally - Aeven was in mid-flight.

Tonight, or tomorrow evening, I'll log in and specifically queue up for SM:C, at which point Aeven will stand stock still, barely even daring to breath lest she accidentally do something that grants her experience... until such time as she find her group, and can jump back into the whole "hit things with a pointy chunk of metal" thing she does so well.

As a noob tank myself...

... I really appreciated this post from Rhii over at I Sheep Things. She pretty much sums up why it can be distracting to have someone else pulling aggro when you're a new tank trying to learn the ropes.

Episode 14, In Which I Begin to Understand

Ran Shadowfang Keep last night, as part of my desire to let Aeven see as many old-world dungeons as she can handle. She put out a very respectable 58.4 dps, taking second spot on the overall dps charts, and soaked up 80%+ of all damage taken in the instance. We managed to take down Archmage Arugal, finishing the run with only one death on the final boss.

All this despite a rogue running ahead to pull hither and yon whatever they felt like, a healer who started the instance with "lol pull more so I can actually heal", and a gnome mage tossing out Arcane explosions while hopping around like a caffeinated Mexican jumping bean on speed. Even with all that, the run was going well enough... though I did decide halfway through that if the rogue pulled it, he could tank it. Unfortunately, since he had a 1000+ gearscore, he could tank it, so there was no teachable moment there.

On the final boss, I started by pulling the adds on the floor, but someone else (I'm not sure who) decided that they could pull Arugal as well. So to start off with, I've got poor Aeven trying to keep two Sons of Arugal from gnawing on the cloth-wrapped doggie treats standing behind her, while trying to get aggro on the Big Bad Boss. Meanwhile, the rogue is doing his best to go all-out and pull Arugal off of Aeven. Then, Aeven gets hit with Arugal's Curse - 10 seconds without tanking, then I have to turn around and find Arugal again. I have about 2 seconds to try and regain aggro before he teleports... and then hits her with the curse again.

I finally get Aeven back on Arugal, he goes down, we roll for loot, and the healer leaves group but not before telling me "learn 2tank".

Sigh.

I'm trying, Mr. Idiot Healer who almost let me die (Twice? Three times? I lost count of how many times I had to pop Divine Protection or use Lay on Hands). The fact that I managed to make it through SFK and only loose one person is, I think, a pretty good indication that I am learning to tank. At least, I'm better at tanking today than I was when I started two or three weeks ago.

So I'm good enough to power you through the dungeon to get teh shinies, but as soon as you don't need me, you're going to turn on the abuse and then run? Man. It's events like this that really make me understand why some tanks seem to have an overwhelming disdain for just about every other player in the game.

Fifty Eight Point Four

Took Aeven on a spin through Blackfathom Deeps, where we only lit two braziers at a time, instead of all four, and actually finished that instance. Then bopped over to another group to run the Stockades twice.

Finished up, looked at Skada, and... holy cow, she's managing 58.4 dps now?

Wow. That was second on the dps chart, underneath the 23rd level hunter.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, to the level 25 rogue who managed to blow the top off of the dps meter in BFD while simultaneously managing to not pull aggro off of me:

You, sir, rock.

Assumptions Will Get You Dead

The first and most important words of adventuring knowledge, which I've imparted to my eldest daughter (yes, I am a geek) is:

Remember to not die.

If I recall correctly, it was Greg Dean who first revealed these words of wisdom to me, though I am unable (i.e., too lazy) to look up the exact comic in which they appeared. My forgetfullness is your gain, as you will now have to read through the backlog of his excellent comic strips in order to find this particular gem of wisdom.

I was recently given cause to ponder a corollary to this most excellent first thesis, which is:

Don't assume that anyone else knows what they're doing.

Which is all well and good, except that when you take it to it's logical conclusion, you arrive at a destination you may not be all that comfortable with. To wit:

Don't assume that you know what you're doing.

I was reminded of this in Blackfathom Deeps the other night. The LFD tool put together a slightly overpower group, again with Aeven as the junior tank. Even in that situation, we were doing quite well, and had managed to make it all the way to Twilight Lord Kelris without any major problems.

Now, in my defense, I've only run BFD once before - and that was on my Naxx-geared level 80 mage, just to see what the dungeon looked like. Oh, ok - and to get the achievement. I'm funny that way. At this point, I remembered that you needed to do something like... ah, right! Click on the braziers to open the door!

Patting myself on the back for remembering this little detail, I went ahead and did just that. I clicked on the braziers.

All of the braziers.

Each of which spawned a wave of critters intent on gnawing my face off to get to the tasty, tasty squishy folks standing behind me.

Ahem.

After that debacle, a bunch of folks dropped group - and I really can't blame them. I mean, I was an idiot. I could see how they might view my actions - "We were running BFD, and the idiot tank clicks on all the braziers and wipes the party." Did I do it intentionally? Accidentally? They couldn't know.

So, for those fine folks that I maligned by allowing hideous creatures of the deeps to gnaw on your bones: please accept my apology. My actions were not motivated by malice, but were, in fact, an act of momentary idiocy. You see, I thought I knew what I was doing.

In other news: despite the setback in BFD, Aeven has managed to make it to level 22. Lots of tasty goodness along the way - Consecration and Exorcism, for one, and her first mount, for another.

Level 22 also brings with it a gear upgrade, as she's now high enough level to make use of Polished Scale armor, and a weapon upgrade, to a Longsword. The new armor will get more or less the same set of enchantments as her current set, with the exception of putting Greater Defense on her cloak and Greater Striking on her longsword.

Oh, and she finally picked up a set of Durable Chain Shoulders, a white quest reward from killing Chok'sul in Loch Modan. That was kind of weird. I mean, when was the last time you saw a white quest reward? I had to check twice to make sure I was really seeing what I was seeing. Shoulders? For me? And I can wear them? Joy!

The armor upgrades are significant, in that - aside from a few drops that I may run into, like the Double Mail armor pieces - they're the best Aeven is going to see until level 32, when she can finally equip Augmented Chain, the first set of armor she'll be able to use that can take level 35+ item enchantments. So, armor-wise, it looks like it'll be a slog through the next ten levels, followed by a big upgrade... followed by another period of no upgrades until level 45, when she can start equipping plate.

At this point, I can hear a couple of you chuckling at my ignorance again. "Waiting until level 45 to wear plate? You silly noob! You get to wear plate at level 40!"

Hey - check out what wowhead has to say about that, chuckles. Notice something there? Yep. While there are plenty of uncommon or better plate items with no level restrictions or with a level restriction of 40 or better, to wear the lowest grade set of standard, non-magical, common plate, you need to be level 45 or better.

So in this instance, at least, I know what I'm doing.

Or at least, I think I know what I'm doing... we'll just have to wait another 23 levels and see :-)

Play The Game Tonight

"Wow. You guys suck."

That was the parting message from our healer last night in Wailing Caverns.

I joined a dungeon crawl already in progress, which is always sort of odd. After I joined, we had one player finish the first boss, then apologize and leave because of the time. We replaced them, powered on, then lost one player in the party to a disconnect and wiped trying to four-man a tough pull. We were pretty much fumbling our way through a confusing instance without much direction or purpose, killing whatever we happened to stumble across.

Into which comes Mr. Healer. One tough pull, one wipe, and it's "Wow, you guys suck" and poof, no more healer.

Yeah. Stay classy, dude.

I'll be honest - I sympathize with the attitude, if not with the way it was expressed. We did suck. I was tanking again, and playing fumble-fingers with my abilities. There was another pally in the party who pretty obviously was just in the group to run around and kill things. The gnome rogue had some pretty amusing bellyaching about how the druids in the instance kept putting him to sleep. We really had no idea where we were going, what we were doing, where the bosses were, or anything else.

Basically, we were just having fun screwing around, playing a video game together.

I realize that some people who play WoW might have an issue with that, but I also find it ironic that someone would have a problem with a bunch of people playing a game. I mean, there's a reason it's called play. In this instance, I wasn't too horribly concerned with downing the bosses. After all - I don't need the loot, I don't need the achievements, I don't really care about much at all. I was more than happy to just bop around and, you know, play for a bit.

Mr. Healer obviously didn't feel the same way. He didn't know who we were. Didn't bother to ask. Didn't bother to offer any direction or suggestions. Didn't bother to talk to us, except to tell us that we sucked.

Noob tank? Check. New guy on a WoW trial account? Check. Couple of other players who, based on their chat, were probably younger than my venerable mumblety-mumblety years? Check. Lack of heirloom items and gear that is pretty much indicative of either casual or first-time players? Check.

Jerk healer with an attitude? Check.

I can't help but imagine Mr. Healer joining a pick-up football game in the park, and after the first play, looking around at his fellow players and going "Wow. You guys suck." and walking off the field.

What can you do in that situation, really, but shrug your shoulders, find another player for your pickup game, and then go back to having fun? You know, the point of playing your game?

Well, I guess you could do something else. You could hop on your blog the next day, and jot a note for all the jerks out there - be they tanks, healers, or dps - who think that they're too good to play a game with you, and let them know...

"Wow. You guys suck."

Wailing Caver... huh?

Continued with the dungeon runs last night - hit the Wailing Caverns, coming in as a replacement tank just before the final boss. Quick xp, a bit of gold, and of course, another blue item (cloak, this time) to vendor.

Having done RFC and WC, I really wanted to take Aeven into the Deadmines. So I queued up again for that specific instance as a tank/dps, and waited... and waited... and waited. It was sheer agony! I was beginning to despair! It took me almost five whole minutes to get into a group!

Yah. Tanks are spoiled rotten.

Aside from an inadvertent pull of Captain Greenskin that caused a wipe, it was a nice run. At level 17, I was at least 3-4 levels junior to the next lowest level person in the party, and I still managed to hold aggro pretty decently. At least, when the 24th level rogue wasn't making with the stabbity stabbity too quickly.

As a result, I'm starting to rethink my decision to go retribution. As time goes on, I'm not sure that I'll be able to keep my dps up at a level that's competitive with similarly leveled characters. Running RFC, a whopping 26 dps isn't all that different from 30 dps. Continue the trend, though, and at some point I'll be doing 10% or even 20% less damage per second than my dungeon delving compadres. At that point, I think I'll have to switch over to tanking (or maybe healing) if I really want to continue running dungeons. If that's the case, I might as well start looking at it now.

I swear that the fact that tanks get near instant queue times has absolutely nothing to do with this decision. Really! And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Tanaris to sell you...

In completely unrelated news, I realize I missed out on a major point in Aeven's leveling: getting her first glyphs at level 15. Not a big deal, I thought. I hit the AH and picked up a Glyph of Judgement and a Glyph of Blessing of Might, then dropped two unspent talent points into Improved Blessing of Might. Popped back to Westfall to do a quest or two and... wow. Just wow.

The critters here were hardly challenging prior to those changes, but now they were falling over like... well, like things that had just had a quivering, snarling white hot ball of Dwarven terror smack them over the head with a heavy piece of metal attached to the end of a long lever arm. Quickly is the word that I think I'm looking for here. Yowza. It's interesting to see just how much effect talents and glyphs have - at least at this level, it seems like they're more signifiant than the minor bonuses from gear. Good news for me - let's see how long that will remain the case, though.

Ragefire Chasm, or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love Aggro

So, I was interested in running Aeven through the Deadmines, if you recall. Before diving into the depths of the LFD tool, though, I wanted to make sure that she was up to the task.

Now, I figure that anyone hitting an entry-level dungeon is probably either going to have a couple of quest greens, or maybe some pieces of heirloom gear. However you slice it, they're going to have some stat bonuses that Aeven won't. Aside from trying to play as intelligently as possible, I decided that before Aeven stepped foot into her first dungeon, I'd make sure she had the best enchantments and potions she could get.

So, first task: enchantments. A few minutes work, and Aeven had a handful of scrolls sitting in her mailbox. Major Health (+100) for her chest piece, Resistance (+3) for her cloak, Superior Stamina (+9) on her bracers, and Greater Strength (+7) on her gloves. Oh, and Minor Stamina (+1) on her boots. No weapons enchantment yet, though I did include a couple of barrels of Minor Wizard Oil.

Next task: potions. I actually already had a bunch of low-level potions sitting in the bank from leveling alchemy, so this was just a matter of tossing whatever was there into the mail. That ended up including some Minor Rejuvenation potions, both Weak and Strong Troll's Blood Elixir, some Elixir of Lion's Strength, and a bunch of random mana and healing potions.

Woohoo! Geared up and ready for trouble. Well, I could queue up for Deadmines, but the LFD tool has worked well for my level 80 characters. Let's see what picking a random dungeon gets Aeven, then... especially since at this level, she can honestly queue as tank, healer and dps! And the RNG says...

Ragefire Chasm.

And Ragefire Chasm.

Oh, and Ragefire Chasm.

Followed by Ragefire chasm.

Topped off with Ragefire Chasm.

Yep. This is what came up from doing random dungeons. Five times in a row.

On the plus side, it really let me learn a bit about tanking, which I'm new to. Running the same dungeon repeatedly let me experiment a bit and figure out what the deal was with pulling, and taunting, and the like. I even got a little "Oh, snap, no you don't!" sort of rush the first time that a mob peeled off of me to head for the mage, and I taunted him back on to me. Skada says I managed to pull about 26 dps, which put me in a solid 3rd place, which is OK for a tank, right? Especially since I ended up soaking 75% of the damage from those runs. At least I was doing more damage than the shammy's searing totem.

Overall, it was a lot of fun - I pretty much managed to keep aggro, unless we pulled more than 3 mobs. Or the mage unloaded to early. Or the healer coughed. After the first two runs, I dinged 16, so I was able to haul myself off to the paladin trainer in Ironforge and pick up some new tricks. Retribution Aura, Righteous Defense, Righteous Fury and Hand of Reckoning made tanking so much easier. Once I had all those abilities in my toolbox, keeping aggro was a whole different story. Unless the healer coughed. Sigh...

Obviously, I need to work more on my aggro management. I do well enough if everything goes right, but if things start getting away from me, watch out. In the first run, there was one pull that went south, though the priest and I managed to stay standing and finish off the mobs... so redemptions and resurrections all around, and we were good to go again.

A couple of lessons learned from my tanking debut:

• Overgeared rogues can effectively tank, and will if you let them.
• Hunters that "helpfully" pull the next mob for you should themselves be shot.
• Hunters that lay down traps for the mobs you're pulling? Priceless.
• Mages that remember to sheep things? Twice as priceless.
• Five RFC runs == enough XP for two levels. Joy!

Finally, gear - or refusal thereof. Refusing to equip a green pair of pants was one thing, but for doing the dungeon randoms, I got five pieces of blue mail, one from each of the Satchel of Helpful Goods given as part of the random dungeon rewards. I think I was 35th level or so on my first character before I even saw a blue item drop, let alone something I could actually use. The blues were all belts, variations on the Earthbound Girdle - of the Champion, of Strength, of Stamina, and two of the Soldier. Ended up being worth about half a gold all told when vendored.

Next up: Deadmines! Or not, depending on whether or not the RNG hates me that day :-/

All vendored, as were the two pairs of Crystalline Cuffs I won on a greed roll. The Staunch Hammer of Power went to the AH.