tanking my first hc

What can I say? I got bored :P

theres nothing to do on nightgerby my hunter. I decked him out in pretty much what he needs. I cant be arsed to wipe 5 times to down a troll boss and it isnt woth an hr of my life for 140 "jps next patch" I raided some firelnad trash with pugs and the guild (to help out with the guild, my gm pays well for it) where my deeps is fine. Can I imporve him? oh god yeah. Do I need to? nope. Could do deathwing right now if I didnt log in for another 6 months. Comes from knowing my class and rotation oh so very well.

Anyway so knowing expanison is under a year away and planning for this I am busy trying to get my proff alts up and ready. By ready I mean geared enough to level to lev 90 without undue tears and hardship on a pvp server with gold to spare for 5000% flying and training etc. So on this protadin of mine, doing dailies, messing about and I misclicked. Yes I meant to queue for a bg. I hit the lfg and had a call for arms, thought screw it. After all worst happens is what? "l2p nub!" "you have been removed from the group"


I announced as I went in that "hey guys :) I am a new tank this is my first hc :) if you want me to leave I will, but I will try my best and any advice/tips you can give appreciated". Well they were firm about me not leaving. Something about the length of the dps queues... The shad priest and lock I admit impressed me. My hunter couldnt have matched them yet they never stole aggro (got to love players who know to fade/soulshatter/etc) the DK had 9.6k gscore (my hunters on 8.8) so obviously raid geared. We took every achievment from the place. A great run, didnt get any gear but I enjoyed it. Its so much fun playing with normal people not idiots and the iceing was the final comment at the end as they all dropped group: I had asked them for comments on my tanking and thanked them for playing with me he said "your tankings fine you never lost aggro. queue again!"

oh tanking oh pain oh joy

What can I say? I made a tank. A proper tank. A paladin omg "sick bitch" tank.

I played at tanking before with my warr, but really It was a poor experience. This one though my word. Helps I heirloomed it to death. Spent a fortune on enchants, blues and armour kits for the duration of her trip to level 85. She always had gems in the mail box from my jc for all her tbc and wrath gear slots. Was a mixed experience.

You know looking back, the questing was a dream, fantastic, real fun. Even after the magic lev 60 when yr in "boring" old content it was dam good fun. She rolled so much shit over, did nagrand and zul arenas at her lev SOLO (roflmao) went into ungoro at lev 49 and killed devilsaurs for the giggle. elites 6 levs above me. Damn Blizz nerfed this game so hard...

Anyway, so ya ridiculous silly leveling. Sitting outside the alliance port in howling fjord on a spawn point and leting it auto attack its way 3 levels for 6 hrs was cool ya. Pvp though: what was that? didnt do alot on this one. a few bgs at lev 12-13. one shotting rogues with avenging shield. Learning to fear hunters. Met a shadow preist in stv while questing, it dotted me, I rode off, rode deep into the hills and hit lay on hands. Idiot followed me. opps. avenging shield silences. then my stun. then oh knows, yr dead. this was in my lev thirties. I didnt pvp much after that, a few alterac valleys (kills 17, deaths 7. kills 20, deaths 5. that sort of thing) made so much easier by being a tank. Healers like tanks in av. That has to be what it is. On my hunter, I get death gripped and raped by 4 bad guys and 15 guys ride past without helping. Simply announcing hey guys I be a tonk, well its simple aint it? get me with a healer to the last boss and we win and its triples all around at the bar afterwards. I get death gripped, theres 3 healers spamming me heals with rogues, dks all around spazzing out on the bad guys. Cant get killing blows in for all the help I get :P.

World pvp apart from the silly spriest, I met a shaman in borean tundra, it attacked me after I had rounded several other mobs up. It died in my aoe along with the gnomishmechnognomes. I thought it was a rare :P until the honour gain and I couldnt loot it lol. then it anked and popped wolves, and tried to heal. Well I might have flown away from the ankh, cos I aint a cunt, but the wolves is a duel flag as far as I am concerned. Might as well have hit bloodlust. Avenging shield interupts heals, hammer of oh I am sorry you appear to be badly wounded, and yey more honour to me. At lev 83 I went back from deephol to vashir to unlock the earthen ring qmaster, had a lev 80 paladin attack me. He did it strangely, we were both killing eels. he killed mine, I helped him kill his. after we looted, he attacked me, so I stunned him and swam off to give him time to think (with me being 3 levs up on him and having deepholm gear etc), but he followed. So I killed him swiftly. Went on my way. Well next big trash pull I did for next quest, had 3 briney serperents on me, he showed up again with a friend! a lev 80/81dk. They both died in my aoe. Honestly this sounds sicker then it is, but really as a protadin you hammer off an aoe rotation on 2-3+ mobs which isnt much short of yr 1v1 rotation and you really spank asses. Yes I use aoe rotations in bgs and yes I do rape people with them.

Tanking though...
it warrents a seperate post. In a nut shell it was traumatic. I dont care what the group does, I soloed every dung at my lev until I hit northrend without drama. I recall one dung where the dps had given me grief (blackrock mountain) they all died cos they pulled while my everything was on cd, they all died and were calling me to wipe. They watched from their bodies as I soloed the boss, then ressed them one by one. Then asked them to please let me pull. Yet 50% of all groups will not let me pull. Yeah I am a paladin but I dont have an aoe taunt. If the hunter starts nuking the axemaster and the lock starts on the warmaster and the frost mage frost novas the 3 caster mobs half way to reaching me (despite I pulled them with avenging shield cos the silence makes casters melee me which lets my melee attack them holding aggron on them and not on you) I have a big problem. Its so simple, so easy for me, just give me 5 secs

5 secs.

AGAIN just 3 globals!! 5 fucking seconds!!! WTF is the matter with you? and then the abuse comes: "this tank..." "noob tank" "l2p retard" "l2 hold aggro". Fuck you all. I would rather solo the content. I would rather forgoe the leveling advantages of dungeons and solo quest/pvp to 85. Fk you and your sad and sorry shit. No a free pet/mount bag isnt gonna make me do it. They can go wallow in their 45 minute dps queues. Now I am 85, buying gear of the ah, ran a bh pug with a nice group let me roll with them despite undergeared (ya tanks are really short full stop. strange huh?) they were like ya a tank!!! omg, ya YOU dont have to worry about gear...

Long story short. Ya I am a tank. You wont be seeing me in yr lfg queue though. You cant pay pay me enough to suffer your bullshit.

The difference between leets and pros

The difference between a "leet" player and a pro player is when a "leet" meets a "nOOB" he tells him so. "L2p" "YOU SUCK" vote kick reason "nub" and my favourite of all "please leave". A pro player will work with what hes got and get the job done. Enroute the nub either learns whats offered or gets kicked/wastes the opportunity. The leet whines about how wow is hard because of the scrubs, how they prevent him from getting on. The pros dont need to whine.

I was reading http://thenoisyrogue.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/please-leave/ not so long ago and it got me thinking. Not up front, more at the back of my mind gnawing away. Theres been similar threads on mmo champion about stuff like this as well. I have had some experiences myself of this (of course) I've been asked to leave or vote kicked from lfgs before.

I also listened to totalbuscuit over at cynical brit http://www.cynicalbrit.com/news/blue-plz-new-year-epicsode/, discussing this (round about 25 mins to 32 mins into the podcast). I listened to the podcast, cos I fell asleep new year about 5pm and though I meant to spend my new year listening to him I guess working 15 nights in a row caught up with me. His comments there also made me ponder the point. I will sum up here very simply: he talked about a guy pulling 3k dps in heroic grim batol, who after the third wipe on the boss because of his low dps, had the guts to say yeah its me holding you back and then left the group so they could continue with a better dpser. His comment was I want to give that guy a medal, he has guts, he has balls, he has a SPINE.

Well as my memories come back to me of various fuck ups, screw ups and rows with idiots like flashbacks almost, I recall my first experience of the "leet" a guy called yorken or some such. I started lfging for the first time in my early(mid?) 30s. I had been playing wow less then two weeks and had been doing rather well by myself, but pretty much like I always do with anything important I went and researched to death beforehand what I was supposed to do before I went into the dungeons. My research being the Brady game strat guides (yes i am one of those guys who buy strat guides, they normally serve me well). Well these were vanilla guides and atlases, full of infomation how to trap dance, how to offtank, how to scout and lecturing how I must watch my healer and if an add starts eating his face its my job to stick a distracting shot into it and lead it back to the tank or to my frost trap. ie not relevant to the wrath babies in full heirlooms zerging the bosses.

So I entered my first ever pug, got uld, opened my atlas up on the desk next to me and started to roll. Was horrified when yorken ignored everything the guide said and just mass pulled 3 packs at a time, mass pulls that were out of all control, rushing ahead while one pack isnt even totally dead to pull the next and generally being a nightmare. the healer fell behind because he was drinking, I fell behind and so did the rogue as we were looting and our tank started screaming over party chat about our low dps and to keep up. After the group wiped, 3 dead with the healer being saved by myself with my cc and kiting, as the healer ressed the others I interupted the tanks diatribe to point out he was going too fast, the group wiped because of him and he should leave his mouth of me, because if it wasnt for me saving the healer he wouldnt be being ressed right now he would be doing a long corpse run. The next thing that happened was I was kicked from the group. Well I was outraged. Not so much at the moron, but at the others for voting yes.

Anyway I requeued and what do you know? inside 3 mins i get scar mon cathedral. Yorkens the tank. So i guess the others had the sense to quit after i was kicked. So I was like "oh its you" and got simliar posts back. Anyway apart from a few snides over p chat to each other ("your not letting yr healer drink again" "stop looting and keep up hunter") we just got on and did the job. Then at the end of the dungeon as all the others left he said "nightgerbil:"
and linked a recount. It showed I was firmly 4th dps, below the tank and just above the healer. The other hunter did half again the dps I did. Then he said "that other hunter was using volley: you are doing single target dps. You need to use vollies." Now you cant argue with that. Numbers dont lie. So I said "ok I will fix that" and I am delighted to say I never met him ever again. Turns out I couldnt train volly until I turned 40 anyway and I have no idea how heirloomed up those guys were but I was in crappy gear with bad talents.

Still as I say the numbers dont lie. I sucked. I didnt enter another lfg until I was in my 50s 5-6 weeks later, after having conversations with many others enquiring as to why I was avoiding the dungeons. It was being noted, I was fking about fishing, exploring and doing stupid achivements instead of getting on and getting to 80. Having been encouraged to try, I found I was actually quite good. Volley spam worked but when the brown stuff hit the spinney thing I saved groups from wiping and they seemed to like it. My first raid on the other hand was in uldar for a weekly. Never had been in, didnt know shit. The raid leader knew this as well. He picked it up from the fact i didnt know to get into a vechile. I got a w to jump into his vecihle and via /w he told me how to fire, got me firing at stuff which i did ok at, when we got to razorwing dragon thingy, he set me to the harpoons on raid chat "because the hunter can dps at range and do the harpoon" in private he explained to me in words of no more then two syllables exactly what i had to do. It wasnt hard. The boss went down we all got our frosties I got a gj in /w and I really really appreciated how he didnt humilate me in raid chat and what a wonderful differnece this was between my first lfg experience.

Meanwhile on my dk I have been kicked from groups leveling up through outlands. Pretty much I have agreed with the kicks to. Doing 400dps when the others are doing 1k, ya I suck. I am a shitty dk. I cant make it work. it seems basic enough, frost rune strike, plague rune strike, puts 2 dieseases on the target. Then hit pestilence it spreads the dots. They need time to tick ofc. Then theres my deathstrike that hits hard and heals me a bit. theres other bits of fluff, but basically i can do single target damage while the others aoe crap down and my aoe takes 3 gcds to even start ticking, by which the trash is normally dead if the group is any good. I tried dropping death and decay, I tried using other abilties, I guess it doesnt help the things not in heirlooms and hes still in his dk starter gear at 68, bar the the nagrand arena weapon, but yeah... I suck. I cant do dungeons as I get chain kicked. So I have given up on it. It gets taken out for a few quests now and again and I have to say, its fking awesum to solo with sooo resilliant, able to take bad pulls and lay watse to ten mobs at a time all at higher level. It is good fun to play. Unplayable though as I cant do dungeons with it.

Lastly theres my Holadin. Oh my I have never had so much fun. Its gross. As a healer topping dps meters while not letting anyone die, ya its awesum sauce, never been kicked yet. I have actually got a few real id requests, heh. I did however stop some dks being kicked. Bless erm they only had 400 dps, below mine but screw it we got the dung down anyway...

patch 4.03 finally!!

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Civ5 yey!

What more needs adding? bought the game. Installing it now. Civ was an awesum game in its original format, though i prefered coloniaztion. The combat though was wierd, this battle ship has an attack of 16 that bronze age spearman has a def of 2. so every 9th time the battleship lost to the spear man and died instead. Well they fixed that in Civ2, a game I truely loved. Played it for years long after civ3 and civ4 came out. Truely amazing and one of my all time favourites. Civ 3 was simply broken. they regressed the combat system back to civ1 and let corrupution run so rampant that the game was unplayable. Any redeeming features in it were lost by these 2 failed mechanics. So Civ4? awesum game yes. As good as civ2? no. It seemed to lack so many things upto and including the ease which I could knock out a scenario to test my self (imagine if you will two small islands with enough room for 4 cities, small cities with a fair bit of production, linked by a 1 wide 20 long land bridge, identical resources and its the mongols or romans on the other end. place the 8 cities, make them lev 3 with 1 def unit each and go...) Idk, civ4 seemed to lose its way a bit with its own cleverness. Loved religions, loved some of the scenarios, found the editor didnt work for me, seriously enjoyed warring at the top difficulty levels. I have to say though that if I am in a peaceful "building" mood and want to try a space ship, prince has always been the best level for that, simply its where your closest to the ai in equality of resource manufacture and peaceful ai civs will leave you alone as long as your similar in power levels to them (ie your not a tasy snack). I always found it ironic that ai civs would only be friendly to equals and seemed to virtually commit suicide when you were twice as strong as they were. I think civ 4 at diety levels closer resemebles the free for alls you used to find in quake. very good fun and the games are short. Anyway. Civ5, they seem to have cut down the tech tree a little, made some things easier so lets see. If the games as good as I hope it is, see you all in a week.

Pvp musings

I got to thinking lately about why I pvp. What brought this to the fore front of my mind was a recent arathi basin battle we got pwned in. You know the drill, 6 good ally players take out each objective against the countless horde, all playing as individuals. fk knows what the rest of the allies were doing, probably wetting themselves in joy and watching us be taken apart. I couldnt get into the game, a run in and wyvern sting that lock, oh dear stunned by a pali, charged by a warrior and oh yes thats a rogue just shadowstepped behind you. squish. Then they moved on to the next sucke... i mean fellow horde comrade in arms. So i ducked out from the farm battle, which resembles world war one (charging machine guns from the front) and it took a couple of goes but i got clear. Gm was undefended, but I was spotted by a lock and he was chasing me, so I didnt tarry. he didnt follow me beyond it thankfully, as I am pretty sure I couldnt have taken him and I got to the stables where a druid was fighting an ally frost mage. Now we all know how that goes, they freeze you to the ground, blink behind you and rape you. If yr lucky enough to actually get a few hard blows in they iceblock. Bitch of an opponent and this one was tough, he near took me down (while the druid healed himself and watched me do it for him). So i get a quick flag capture in while waiting for him to run back from the gyard to defend the stables and I get a w "dont cap!" why? "let them win" fuck that. I had canceled my flag capture as I thought he had a reason something sneaky maybe, like dont let them know we are here or something. So I took the flag. Got alot of "***** retard!!" over bg chat for it. I simply replied they aint getting their achievment for owning 5 bases here. "what really? you will wait an extra 2 mins to finish a lost bg just to deny them an achievment?" yes. Well allies won that game with 3 bases and any hordies dont like the fact I didnt roll over and die, they had the opportunity to put me on ignore.

As time has gone by my attitude to the allies has hardened. Wheras I used to ignore or even help them, it has slowly devolved into an an unreasoning hatred of the opposite faction. There was a 58 human pali today, stood in uc court yard. I dont know why or what he thought he was doing. After my exy shot killed him, it cost me 2 secs till the combat flag left me and I could remount, it cost me an arrow it was just a waste of time and didnt even register as a honour kill. It felt good though, made me smile. I sometimes see them in northrend while flying around, espec in grizzly hills, they do the pvp quests to help level and then I kill them. Or they fight in wg then all goto fish for the daily in scol basin. In fishing gear with pvp flags up. I get some pointed comments sometimes from other horde, they dont feel its appropiate maybe.

I didnt think it was appropiate when as a lev 74 I was going through the argent crusade quest chain of opening crusaders pinacleand doing the quest where you free trapped crusaders from webs and while busy in a fight 3 webs were popped around me by a lev 80 nelf hunter. The joy of hunters in that quest is we can track undead, so we can see which webs have neurabian ambushers in and which have trapped crusaders. Ofc it meant he could leave me with 3 higher level elites then sit on his dragon emoting "laughs at you" while they tore my pet apart and I fdeathed on the floor. If I had been a different class I would have died for sure, with a repair bill. I am reminded when I was a noob lev 20 something questing in ashenvale. got a quest taking me across to the beach on the other side of the zone and as I ride down it, I get tagged by the guards of astranar. Who the living fuck thought it was a good idea to put the main ally town slap bang in the middle of the main road? what the hell is that about? I didnt die from the guards, I got clear of them but they turned my flag on. Which the ??? gnome rogue really appreciated as he one shotted me then camped my body. Killed me 3 times, once i was lieing down behind a bank (I have no idea how he figured i was there, I was careful on that ress!), my pvp flag went off after that and he went on his way. good sport for him I am sure. If it had been a pvp server I would have had to have logged out and gone played mafia wars for an hour I guess.

I can give more examples, but I guess the point is the more time I spend around and with the opposite faction the more my dislike for them grows. The more stunts I watch them pull the more ruthlessly I gank any ally I can. Pretty much for me now if its red its dead and I will go out of my way to do it. It is very irrational though and that concerns me. I should maybe get a handle on this and throttle this behaviour back.

Au revoir Benny

Well yesterday My alpha rat Benny passed away. Hes been fading last 6 weeks or so, its old age he was 3 and a half years old. I segretated him away from the rest of the pack two weeks ago, when I came back from work and found him nearly catatonic and covered in bite marks from the others. I dont know why its pack nature to kill an old leader who falls, but I guess we see the same behaviour in the media with they way they handle celebrities, politicians even the England football manager.

Well after I took him out, started to nurse him, he managed a bit of food over next few days, started grooming again (very bad sign that had stopped: he was always a proud rat, grooming was always going on when he wasnt eating or exploring) he was alert sometimes, not in obvious pain or distress, but mainly slept. His back legs had stopped working, so he dragged himself about, but careful examination showed he was trying to use them. He lost a shed load of weight and was sad to see his emaciated state. So I been getting him out sleeping next to him, just spending time letting him curl up to me. Yesterday when I went to check him, he was cold, barely a heartbeat. So i stroked him a bit, he stirred a little, so put him under my shirt, to try and share some bodyheat with him, went to sleep. Woke up and he was gone, curled up and peaceful.

You know theres an old song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FLDdjj27kQ&feature=related Guess my little boy broke even. Worse ways to leave this world I guess.