Gitr Knows WoW

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Looking For Guild…

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This weekend I came to a rather sad conclusion. The guild I’m in is going nowhere. They’re all great people, good pvp’ers and very helpful – but they’re going nowhere. By nowhere, I mean they’re not going to be progressing past the Outland 5 mans. Individuals in the guild might see Kara, but it will only be because at some point down the road, they’re going to attune themselves and jump to a different guild. Beyond that? Forget it. Right now – I have good money that says more than half of them will never hit 60 – much less 70.

Now in the past, this wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest. For the two years or so that I have played this game I have been an unabashed master of ALTs. *Progression* was a dirty word for me and the skum-sucking bastards that left guilds in order to do more end-game were the worst sort of WoW-player imaginable. Now, after all this time and all the drama-dragons and end-game bashing I’ve experienced, I find myself in a particular quandary.

The coin has been flipped. My alts languish, my main levels at a dizzying rate. I want to raid.

Progression. I crave progression. I want to sheath my Warlord’s Bludgeon in the brain-pans of instance bosses, I want to breathe the rarefied air of the places only a small percentage of WoW players go, I want to be a champion of the naru and to stand, calm and proud in T6 gear while mongoose enchants flicker and spark off of paired epic battle-hammers.

Seriously though, I’d just be happy if I could get my guild-mates off of their alts long enough to get through Slave Pens.

I know the life of a raider isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be. The guild infighting, waiting for slots to open up in a run, gear drama, dkp, wipes, repair bills. Worse it probably also means that my enhancement Shaman will have to retire his matched battlehammers and replace his +STR and +AP gear with +Healing a shield and a kilt of flowery-heals. But I’m ready for it.

I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m in the military and that I’m going to deploy this year. I will spend a good 9-12 months with no WoW at all. This time constraint coupled with my ALT-itis going into remission seems to have galvanized me. I have goals – I want to run instances. I want to progress. This sudden focus has caused me to look at the game and the guild I’m in with new eyes.

The irony alone is enough to make anyone who knows me to /snork a little. Most of them know me from my time helping found and *build* an Alliance guild that is currently running two full time teams in Kara and progressing through Zul’Aman. They will progress further. It’s just a matter of time. I raided with this crew back in the pre-BC days and enjoyed it as much as someone that would rather be on their alt possibly could. In the end, I moved on – they were focused – I was not. If I were willing to go back to my Alliance toons and finish leveling them I know I’d have a raid slot on their B-team. I know the company would be good and the drama minimal.

But I’m Horde at heart. I’ve committed a lot of time and effort to leveling my Shaman and continue to chug along, my current guild tag still in place. Every night I try to schedule an instance. We have enough mid 60’s that we could be running a myriad of Outland’s plentiful 5-man dungeons – but we rarely do. My favorite druid healer has rediscovered her troll-hunter and is pew-pew-pewing in Alterac Valley. The rest of the guild are either folks that just can’t seem to get out of the 30-39 bracket, or they’ve shelved their higher level toons in favor of grinding battleground rewards in 10-19 Warsong Gulch. Our guild leader has been benched at 59 fully intent on gathering both warlord’s 1-H swords and the full epic pvp armor set before heading into Outlands. He’s been at it for about three weeks now. I fully expect him to start (another) alt either halfway through this work, or immediately upon achieving his goal. He’ll never tank or off-tank an instance with us.

The most bitter pill to swallow in all of this is that each of these players is me. They’re doing things I’ve already done. Just because I’m suddenly all bug-up-the-butt concerned with raiding and running instances doesn’t mean they need to change their game to suit me. It also means that I know how little luck I’m going to have in trying to get (any) of them to follow a schedule. I’ve tried. When go-time comes around the players that committed to the run are nowhere to be found. One or two show up late and are obviously hesitant when I shoot them an invite. No, no – our healer hasn’t logged in yet. Yeah – go ahead and play on your ALT – I’ll let you know when she logs on and we can go.

Normally, I end up pugging the instance – or having to forgo it altogether. The necessary team-members either never show up or show up so late that it’s obvious they never intended to go in the first place. Lately, when I try to schedule a run, my queries are met with silence. It’s that nasty silence – the kind you get when your newest level 15 recruit is crying on guild chat for someone to run them through Wailing Caverns. Everyone heard you – and everyone is feigning afk in hopes you’ll just go away.

Part of me figures I just need to relax. Spend the next few months finishing the drive to 70 (not much longer now) and play casually until the deployment hits. After all, the game will be here when I return and there are *other* things to do besides WoW. Another part of me wants to at least get a shot at running some regular instances with folks that know what they’re doing. I don’t need the perfect tabard and I’m not particularly worried about dkp. In fact – I can even forgive a really pretentious Latin guild name if it means that I can clear Underbog and Slave Pens together in one night.

So give me grief, call me a faithless guild jumping hypocrite that’s getting exactly what he deserves. Who knows, you might even be right. But until then, I’m looking for some guildies that know how to finish what they start and who can keep even the most minimal of schedules. I’ve been in plenty of fly-by-night “family friendly casual raiding guilds” and know that most of them (are) family friendly and (aren’t) raiding guilds. A the same time I doubt I can commit to the brutal schedules of the hard-corp raiders.

If you are:

  • Horde
  • Raid 3 nights a week between 8-12 CST
  • Not Ass-Hats
  • Need an enhancement shammy or even a (cough) resto shammy … Heck – I even have a 65 warrior that I could toss in on the bargain

Give me yell. We can tear stuff up together.

PUG Done Right

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So I was in a good PUG the other day, awesome actually and I felt the need to share. First off “good” and “PUG” are two terms that aren’t often used together. Normally PUG = UGH or PUG = /facepalm.

Not this time.

Why? Because despite the fact it *was* a PUG – the people in it knew not only *what* they wanted – but knew how to go about looking for it.

Skychaser was hanging out in Thrallmar the other night and had been alternately questing and running Ramparts with pick up groups in order to build rep and snag gear. I’d already munged through on successful run with a miserable group that included a 70 warrior tank. Poor communication, completely incomprehensible target marking, and craptastic threat generation from the tank (amazing) were all highlights. We wiped at least three times in what I consider to be one of the easiest and most entertaining instances in Outland. The only thing that managed to pull the group through to the end was the fact that the tank had just an insane amount of health. He didn’t have to be good – he just had to survive. Too bad no one else tended to.

Well – I was still smarting after that run, but wanted to go back since I really hadn’t snagged anything useful. While I was grinding through a kill quest I saw the following pop up in general chat:

“Looking for more, Ramparts – Beast Master Hunter or Enhancement Shaman DPS”

A little more specific than I’m used to seeing in a /LFM. Intrigued, I sent a tell and volunteered. Moments later I got an invite – seconds after that I was summoned to the instance.

Nice…they were ready to go! (One point for the PUG – Preparation!)

Upon entering I looked at the group and was somewhat surprised by the composition. Normally – the average PUG run seems to be filled with shadow priests, fury warriors and hunters of indeterminate spec. Everyone wants to dps – no one wants to tank – and everyone expects everyone else to heal. Not here.

We had a holy priest…an Orc tank…a Tauren Fury warrior OT…a feral/resto hybrid spec druid – and me – an enhancement shammy. Roles were quickly delegated and I found myself cheerfully filling the the primary dps slot for the team. Once everyone else was sorted into a role, the druid took on the role of marking targets and explaining the precedence. This was nice, as it’s far easier to manage aggro when you and the tank are working on the same target.

With the basics out of the way, buffs done and loot agreed upon, we jumped into the first pulls and started killing. I tell you, a lot of folks complain about Ramparts and the ugly multi-pulls that come along with it, but our tank was allowed to initiate the fights and cement aggro with not only one target, but *all* targets. No one jumped in and started beating on stuff right away. By the time we did wade in, he already had a great head of steam going and could easily manage the odd onsee twosee that peeled away to go after the healer. If a dps class grabbed aggro for a moment, they immediately stopped pounding the target and allowed the tank to regain control. If he was unable to, the OT would move in and pick the target up and drag it back over to the tank for him to manage as time allowed. All the while our healer conserved mana and easily kept us alive.

I know this is pretty reasonable stuff that any competent group would do – but come on folks – this was a *pug*. Pug’s are famous for ZERO aggro management, poor healing, and spectacular wipes caused by poor aggro radius awareness. I was thrilled to say the least, but kept figuring that our progress thus far was a fluke…The PUG monster would obviously show its head at any moment.

So it was with a sense of excited anticipation that we cleared the first corner of Ramparts in order to create the battle-space for Watchkeeper Gargolmar and his pocket healers. Pulls were consistent and dps applied with precision as we tore down the packs of orcs that surrounded the area. With just enough time to rest and recover a little mana, the tank pulled Gargolmar and the rest of us went to work on his healers. In very, very short order the two clothies were dropped and our group focus fired on the boss. Moments later, the big guy is calling for his (absent) healers and shortly thereafter he’s on the floor.

Not bad.

The rest of the instance pans out in much the same way. Careful pulls, precision dps, and a superlative hybrid druid that always seemed to know when she should DPS and when she needed to pull out of cat (or bear) and help the priest with heals. Even those nasty rings of casters that normally wreck unprepared groups were rounded up and summarily executed. No runners – no unexpected tank death and no adds. The rest of the instance dropped as easily as the trash mobs. We scarred Omor up and took his stuff – and both Vazruden and Nazan were tanked and spanked with little to no fuss at all. Skychaser managed some boss loot and walked away with the nifty Garrote String Necklace, a nice change of pace for me as I rarely win contested loot rolls.

All in all I was just overwhelmed at how well the PUG had run. The players were obviously all well versed in group dynamics and it was a truly pleasant change of pace to see how all of us simply and almost instinctively knew how to support each other. I give the greatest part of this runs credit for success to the tank for knowing his business and to the druid who managed our group, the targeting, and her support role with aplomb. To be clear – everyone in the group knew their job – but the two stars were without a doubt this pair.

In a way, I almost hate that this run was *so* good. When you find a PUG that just clicks, it always leaves the hope that the next PUG you’re a part of will be just as good. Sadly, this is rarely the case. Like a junkie looking for a fix and hoping to get hooked up with “the good stuff”, Skychaser immediately jumped in with another PUG forming for the Blood Furnace. The crew looked good – an old school hunter in full pre-BC epics, a reasonable looking tank, a priest, a warlock and me. As we stood about the instance entrance, buffing and having a bite to eat, the priest suddenly went shadow and said:

“So, who’s healing?”

A Night at the Ramparts

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Gitr went to Hellfire Ramparts last night as a level 62, Fury specced, Bogslayer geared, main tank. I’d hit Honored with Honor Hold and bought two of the one-handed swords, but went to the AH to buy a new shield for running an instance properly. We had a nice makeup of the group, minus a hunter who never seemed to drink and left his raptor with growl on the entire time.

It was fun, and here’s how it went down.

We entered the instance and started off with… you guessed it: a wipe. Ramparts has to have one of the most difficult initial pulls of any instance up to that level, if not the whole game. It’s chaotic and a rude welcoming for a newly formed PuG. Hilariously, a 61 priest had joined the group thinking he was there for dps because there was a level 62 shaman. Thus, no one was healing. My health just went down, down, down, until I went down. I’ll leave the rest of that pull to your imagination.

We quickly regrouped and by the time we rounded the first corner, we could finish a pull with everyone but me at 100% health. That is how things went until we got to Watchkeeper Gargolmar. I really like the marking ability of my UI, but don’t ask me what does it, because I have no clue. Possibly Discord Unit Frames, but your guess is as good as mine. I marked him for me to tank and to freeze trap a healer while the others downed the second healer. The fight went exactly as it should and he dropped cloth shoulders for our priest.

There were quite a few messy pulls on the way up to Omor the Unscarred, but we scarred him pretty good and killed him after I kept his attention on me the whole time. What was happening to the others, I have no idea. I think that’s part of what I like about tanking. I watch the boss, my healer’s health, and see if anyone is taking enough damage to warrant a run, rescue, and taunt. With Deadr and Huntr I was always more aware of the fight as a whole. With Gitr, I don’t know and don’t care what people do to themselves as long as the following things keep going:

  • I keep aggro on what I’m hitting
  • My healer takes zero damage
  • The vitally important dps or off tank stays alive

Those are the only things that a change in status will cause me to do anything other than whack, revenge, and sunder my target.

With Omor down, we headed over to Vazruden & Nazan. The first time we killed the two guards, Vazruden didn’t jump down, so we all died by fire. Eventually, Nazan landed and I sacrificed myself to go ahead and let us reset the fight by causing a wipe. Two more attempts later, we had enough damage and mana to get the job done rather easily. The priest ran out of mana, but everyone pitched in to take Nazan down faster. My 7k buffed HP helped quite a bit. I got down to about 20% at the end and wasn’t going to get any heals. I got a nice cloak with +Sta that made me happy. I turned in my quests and picked up the Blood Furnace quest for tonight. Looking forward to it, I am. Yes.

Calling All Alt-Aholics

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Life as an alt-aholic can be quite strenuous on the mind, although I’d argue that it keeps you sharp. The great makers at Blizzard did not intend for you to only play one toon, or they would lock out character creation after the first toon is born as a level 1 n00b, am I right?! Right, of course I am. I am Gitr and unabashedly cocky in my opinions.

That said, when one hits a major milestone, close enough to smell the next great thing (read: Outlands), one is to abandon ship (regardless of cool gear in hand) and jump on another toon. If not, then alt-ism does not run in the family and you need not attend AA meetings (Alt-aholics Anonymous).

To get the full grasp of the condition, you have to look at the time spent on any one toon. It’s not uncommon at this point for people to have hundreds of days on their main toon, even if they have multiple 60s or 70s, because their main is their true love. Gitr has roughly 25 days of /played time, Deadr around 16, and Huntr and Paladr are still under 10 days. I still have yet to hit level 70 yet, and have 0, read: ZERO, pieces of Tier 1 or higher gear. Every time something dropped that I could roll on, I lost. That kind of brick wall started me on the path of the alts.

Deadr

He’s currently my highest level toon, climbing at 67 for greater and greater things. He entered Blade’s Edge Mountain and Netherstorm last week and looking forward to completing several level 67 quests for the gear upgrades that they offer. He feels powerful and fun to play, but lacks the healing gear to sufficiently main heal 5-mans as a Shadow spec. He has +558 Healing, but is constantly running out of mana because of a lack of… talent. It’s tempting to repec Disc/Holy for added healing, but trying to maintain some level of damage and survivability for the last 3 levels.

Huntr

He’s is my most recently super-neglected toon, despite his status as my second-highest toon at 62 in Zangarmarsh. I brought him out a couple of weeks ago to tame Ironback, but that’s as far as his fun went. The most he’s got going for him right now is maintaining guild control as the guild master of Buttered Monkeys on Velen. I’ll probably go back to him when someone is getting closer to 70 (or 60… or 40).

Gitr

He got an offer he couldn’t refuse on Tuesday in class: transfer to Silvermoon and I’ll get you into Kara and the other end-game instances. That’s right! Runnik is the GL of Dooms Assailants and they have two teams in Kara, with one of them on farm status. Now I need to get to 70. Talk about motivation, I’m telling you. It’s almost enough to drop the others’ progress, but noooooo. That would not be in character. I must remain true to my inner player and ignore my head when it comes to matters of leveling. I still couldn’t resist getting him to level 61 this morning before work.

Paladr

He hit 50 despite the fun he was having in the BGs as a 49 twink with double epic handheld equipment (see above). He still surely wants to hit Outlands as soon as possible, but not without neglecting his brothers. He’s a very fair, honorable paladin, worthy of respect for that understanding. Right now, he’s waiting his turn in the line-up so he can enjoy his new shield a bit more. The double epics twice in one sub-60, let alone any dual weapon epic, is a first for me, so Paladr is quite special.

Frostr

He hasn’t done much, but got to 25 super-fast and wouldn’t mind getting some more fresh air. I’m sure the inn is getting a tad stale after 5 months or so of sitting there wondering if I’ll be back. Unfortunately, he’s on Burning Legion in a nasty PvP atmosphere that really takes a bite out of clothies (have you seen Deadr lately!?) and it’s debatable whether to re-level him freshly somewhere else or pay $25 for my 25 hours of leveling he’s done to take him to Velen. I’m definitely interested in playing around with a frost mage build and see how often I can get stuff to crit.

ZOMG, I just got Ganked…

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I’m not an alt kind of guy. I usually just hang out on my level 70. If I’m bored, I sit in Stormwind and chat. Never before have I leveled an alt over level 15… until this week. Awhile ago I started a Blood Elf rogue on Gorefiend, simply because my roommate did too. I got him to level 15 and that’s about it. He sat there, collecting dust on my character list for the next four months.

Then, I got an itch. I don’t know why so don’t ask but I just did. So there I was, and the levels began to fall behind me. As of right now my rogue is level 24 and questing in Hillsbrad Foothills. Now, there’s one other interesting fact before my story goes on: Gorefiend is a PvP server, the first one I’ve ever attempted. Runnik is on Silvermoon, a normal server, so I’m used to going through the whole “/pvp” thing before I get owned…

So Arcyon (my rogue), was in Hillsbrad questing. I believe I had to take out a few Hillsbrad mages or something irrelevant. when out of nowhere from behind me unstealths this red “Level 33 Rogue” demon from the horrid, flaming pits of hell. You can imagine my surprise when it dawned on me about halfway through my life: “ZOMG… I’m getting ganked…”

I try in vain to fight off this rogue but alas, he pwned me. Before I leave for the graveyard he of course emotes me with “Vipers spits on you,” before he trots away laughing at his devilish actions. I immediately search my social tab for someone to tell this to. There’s no one online from my new guild (that only has like 17 members) and there’s just one guy on my friends list who I’ve only talked to once. I know for a fact he has no clue who I am. He’s a level 70 hunter in Shadow Labs that I met through my roommate four months prior. Screw it, I gotta tell someone.

So I send him a tell saying: “Ok, let it be known: I just got ganked for the first time ever since I’ve never played on a PvP server before… just had to tell someone.”

I don’t get a reply from him, instead I get tells from level 70s in his guild that I’ve never spoken too: “Sorry you got ganked :(,”

“Sorry man, getting ganked blows,” “I’ll run you through SM sometimes to cheer you up from getting ganked,” “We’re talking about you on vent, lol.”

I reply to the last one with: “I feel like I just lost my virginity, from behind… with a Backstab…”

This guys starts rolling laughing and talking on vent with his guild about my comments on getting ganked for the first time.

So finally I release and make the trek back to recover my body. I continue my questing and just after downing three mobs at the same time because of crappy adds I turn around and there’s a red “Level ?? Priest” on a mount…. Oh crap…. The Night Elf Priest dismounts, and this douche Mind Controls me and I watch in horror as I say out loud, “Oh! Come On!!!” as Arcyon runs into a group of mobs and then the priest stops her MC and the group tears through my 17HP I had left from my last fight. ZOMG I just got ganked… again… /sigh… dangit….

Well, now I have an idea of what the whole PvP server thing is about. It’s nothing but working and working and working on quests that you may frequently die on if you’re soloing, and just before finishing it getting your butt handed to you by cross-faction characters. And that’s just at Hillsbrad, I can’t imagine what STV is going to be like! So, you can imagine how I feel about PvP servers now and how I feel about even working on leveling Arcyon from now on… You guessed it: I LOVE IT!!!! I can’t wait to level up higher. Those ganks only fueled my desire to level up and gank the heck out of other lowbies on that server. With that said, I still need to finish that quest that I’ve been trying for the last hour… I guess I’ll start there.

The Evolution of a BG Noob: Let the Battles Begin

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Gitr finally got into some PvP with Paladr this week. Other than about 2 hours of total time in WSG matches for over 40 days played, this was my first entry into hard-hitting PvP. Of course, Deadr grew up to level 66 on a PvP realm and was the victim of hundreds of gankings, world PvP is nothing like fighting in a battleground setting, that is for sure.

This will be an ongoing series of my personal exploits in BGs as a complete and total noob for this kind of playstyle. See it as your one opportunity to openly laugh at me and have a good old time at my expense, because I’ve made some seriously dumb mistakes, but learned a lot already. I’ll be as transparent as possible in an attempt to comfort other noobs who are coming to learn from scratch.

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