Monday, December 16, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- I am hitting that LFR wall again.

- After a few weeks of pressing it hard for a few characters I think I need a break from it once more.

- I seem to go in cycles, hit it hard, avoid it almost completely, hit it hard again.

- I might try to just take it easy now, while I collect the rest of my valor for my hunter.

- Which means one week off as I think I have a week and a half more to cap it.

- So effectively 2 lockouts, but one week + would be more like it.

- I'm am not sure if I am glad to hear other people are not getting their drops off sha to see it was not only me or if I feel bad that my bad luck is spreading.

- A few posts on the forums over the last few weeks have lots of people complaining that the "guaranteed" sha is not coughing up the goods.

- I could have told you that ages ago.

- What I could not have told you was if you put in a ticket you might get what you should have.

- Who the hell would have guessed, normally blizzard is not very helpful with stuff like that.

- Check that, not normally, always unhelpful with stuff like that.

- A guild mate, who did not get his 12th stone this week, which would have forced him to wait another week, said that one of the posts suggested putting in a ticket.

- He had gotten one off sha this week, but had not the week before or the week before that.

- So he did just that.

- Less than 1 hour later there was a response with a runesstone in it.

- How awesome is that?

- And the kicker, was it was not this week he did not get the stone off sha, it was 2 and 3 weeks ago.

- So not only did the GM replace the stone that did not drop, but he did it for a fight from 3 weeks ago.

- Not going to help me with the two recent characters that got screwed but maybe I should put in a ticket on my second priest.

- Killed Lei Shen 3 weeks ago and nothing went into my bag, his body was sparkling but I could not loot it, even after bending down and trying multiple times.

- It was the last thing I needed to move to the next part the quest and the last boss I could kill for the week.

- It would have been my final sigil.

- I finally said, screw it, and gave up and have not logged on to that character since that day.

- Blizzard needs to do something about their definition of "guaranteed".

- I always joke, partly because it is completely true, that blizzard and math do not have a good relationship.

- Seems they aren't too friendly with understanding what words mean either.

- My priest has now joined my hunter in the "I have nothing to do with my valor" department.

- Capped and nothing more I can upgrade.

- I need to get into some more flex or normal runs with it.

- I decided to do some LFRs on my monk this weekend as DPS.

- I never tank LFR.

- So at a 522 item level with tank gems, tank enchants and tank reforging I was pulling between 105 and 125 with it.

- Not to bad for being a little rusty.

- Really helps when you have a class that you can effectively do optimum DPS with 4 buttons.

- I really like that, rogues have a rotation like that.

- But one problem rogues have that monks don't is ramp up time.

- I hate target switching on my rogue.

- I don't so much mind it on my monk.

- I think they can make rogues so much better by making one simple change.

- Put the combo points on you, not on the mob you are attacking.

- If redirect is on cooldown, and it often is as I use it whenever I switch, I usually want to finish off the target I am on instead of switching right away like I should.

- That is bad game play on my part and I know it.

- But I do not want to waste combo points.

- Put the points on the rogue and target switching is no longer an issue.

- Back to the monk, the reason I think it did reasonably well even with me being not appropriately geared for it and slightly out of practice is I had decent tanks for the most part.

- Not good, but decent, and that is a huge key to doing well as melee.

- A person who only plays range will never understand the problems melee has with a tank that moves crap when he doesn't need to and doesn't move crap when he does need to.

- Like tanks that decide the boss should stand in a poison puddle.

- Gee thanks, I needed a break, I'm going to go to the bathroom, let me know when you decide to let me attack again.

- I have 3 options really.

- 1) Stand in bad to get maximum DPS and let the healers deal with it, which is what most bad players do.

- 2) Stand in front of the mob where the tank is safely standing, but that only works if the tank is not standing in bad himself and the boss does not have any frontal effects.

- 3) Go to the bathroom, make some coffee, ask the tank to move the boss in raid only to get ignored, or wait.

- If you get a tank that knows what they are doing that is the difference between a melee doing 50K and 100K.

- And this is why I love ranged ladies and gentlemen.

- But things are not all roses with ranged either.

- Why do all tanks in LFR love to open chest on spoils that LoS all the ranged?

- It is like they know if they open this one chest everyone in the room will have to stack in one single point because that is the only angle that will be able to get to it.

- So that must be the one that open first right?

- LoS tank are even worse as a healer.

- As a damage dealer you just do not damage, as a healer do you not heal the tank the tank dies and then so does everyone else and it is a wipe.

- Then someone blames the healers when it was not the healer fault, it was the tanks fault for going LoS.

- Most recent LFR place where this always happens?

- Turning up the stairs at the start of wing 3, tanks run up and in and grab 30,000 mobs.

- Excuse me mr tank, three small issues here.

- You are behind a wall, on the stairs and behind a wall in the room and up a flight of stairs which oddly enough means you are out of LoS.

- So giving three obstacles for healers to get past to heal you so you can do your super tank impersonation is not exactly a good idea for your survival.

- Love being on my priest when they use the stairs to LoS me.

- I run up fast with a speed bubble and leap of faith them back to the doorway at the top of the stairs, so the other healers can heal them too.

- Speaking of leap of faith, what is with all the priest in LFR doing it all the time for no reason other than to do it?

- I see it all the time, in the middle of a fight people flying all over the place.

- They were not standing in bad, they were in no need of being moved, someone just moved them for the heck of it.

- And what is with mages lately?

- I saw three ninja pulls yesterday, all three by mages, all three were different mages.

- And it was not like they tired to hide it.

- One rode up to jug on their mount, through him, and then back into the group that was sitting and eating.

- He said, sorry, didn't realize I pulled.

- You did not realize the sound of him coming after you?

- You did not realize that walking through him might upset him?

- You did not realize the ground shaking?

- You were just being a jerk, glad they kicked you.

- Public service announcement: If you pull by mistake, do not walk to others, walk into the boss and die.

- I'll give you three reasons you should do that.

- 1) Reviving one person is faster than everyone running back.

- 2) Your mistake should not cost others, in terms of time and gold, and food.

- 3) Only allowing yourself to die to your mistakes shows you are a good player.

- All that does not matter, he was trying to troll the group, the group kicked him, all is par for the course.

- We have a newer guild member that is really starting to get on my nerves.

- There are the types that ask questions all that time that you can tell just do not know.

- That can get frustrating, sure, you just want to tell them looking it up once in a while, but they do not know, so it is understandable and I try to help them.

- This new member is not a bad player, he is a great player actually, but he likes to play he is a moron.

- And he asks questions about everything, everything he should know already.

- Every LFR he questions all the boss mechanics on vent.

- Dude, you did this last week, is has not changed.

- I've even started to respond to him like that because it is getting annoying.

- I forgot what it was he asked friday night, but I explained it anyway even if I knew that he really knew better.

- Then 15 minutes later he asks the same question.

- I said, it is the same answer I told you 15 minutes ago.

- It is like it is our own live action troll.

- I swear I am going to kick him just for being an asshole.

- Nothing wrong with having a lot of questions but when you ask someone the same question 5 times a night you are either a complete idiot not worthy of wasting time on, or you are trolling.

- Both cases mean I do not want to have you around.

- There could be another option there, perhaps he just does not listen.

- He heard the answer, but did not listen to the answer.

- There is a difference.

- In that case, do not ask a question unless you are ready to listen to the answer.

- Oh yeah, was talking about my monk.

- So I did okay with it because the tanks were decent, not because I was really doing all that well.

- I took a lesson I learned form the last time I played it a bit and am getting better at it.

- I think it will be the tank I finish the legendary with as it is the furthest along as is.

- It is also the only tank I am decent at DPS with.

- Ranking them all the monk is the easiest to switch back and forth with in my tanking gear.

- As I said, I also do okay with it while set up for tanking.

- And the stat priority is really close, so that works too.

- On my druid I can do pretty decent with my one button macro, but cat is not fun to play, it is like playing a hard version of a rogue with more things to keep track of.

- The one button macro, while it works, is boring as hell.

- My DK can do blah DPS.

- Means I will be top 3rd of LFR but nothing to feel as if I am really doing okay with it.

- Not like I do it enough to get good at it, but it does have potential to be okay.

- Much like the monk I can basically get it down to a four button rotation.

- It is just not fluid like the monk one, in my opinion.

- Say what you want about monks but I think blizzard did a fantastic job with them, they fit well and play well.

- For my warrior I would need a different weapon, can't really just use the same weapon for tanking and DPS like I can with my monk, druid and DK.

- This puts a kink in the works to begin with because it is not like there are any easy weapons to grab when starting up to begin with.

- I am okay at arms, never liked fury.

- Just do not have a weapon for it, and being it is hugely gear based having myself set up for tanking will greatly effect my DPS so that is not as much of an option.

- Paladin is the same and I just hate ret.

- At least I can heal, if I wanted to, on my paladin, but that would surely require an entirely different set of gear.

- And being my paladin is my least played class this expansion at a dismal 500ish item level, the idea of making a second set for a character that does not even have one set yet is not exactly attractive.

- So monk gets the go as my tank that will get the cloak.

- Oddly enough, I will get it as a damage dealer doing the LFR to collect the things because I refuse to tank the LFR.

- However I have no issues "helping" with shaman.

- If something goes wrong in the LFR people love to blame the tanks, but they would not blame the person that was "helping" they will blame the other tanks.

- Perhaps they should start treating the tanks that queue up as tanks as people that are helping.

- But I guess that is hard to do sometimes.

- I zoned in on spoils on my priest the other day and I had more life than either of the tanks.

- All timeless gear, ungemmed, unenchanted, not reforged, not even with tank stats on it.

- Okay, I can get why people get on the tanks when they show up like that.

- But that is all you got now.

- You made your bed, now lie in it.

- If you did not scare all the real tanks away from the LFR you would not be stuck with those people.

- Instead, the people that are geared for tanking and know how to tank do not go there.

- As evidence by myself, even as a lesser tank, and the many like me, that just refuse to tank the LFR.

- It is the way they treat tanks that left us with 2 tanks on spoils that my cloth wearing priest has more life than.

- A great line came to me the other day when a healer decided he wanted to go DPS because he did not think the healing was really needed.

- If a damage dealer came in and was barely doing any damage would you complain?

- Hell yes.

- Then don't come in as a healer and barely do any healing.

- If you are going to complain about someone else, don't do it yourself.

- On that note of wisdom, that's all folks.

- Have a great day.

4 comments:

  1. Mr Elf;

    Check your blog email address :D

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    1. Will do.

      As a note to anyone that might read this, I rarely if ever check it unless someone mentions they mailed there.

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  2. There's a blog e-mail address? Took a look a while back for some reason and couldn't find one. :)

    I was thinking last week that it's been a while since the last time I've killed Ordos when a tank pulled him... for weeks it's been nothing but dps doing it. I'm torn... I hate it when that happens but more often than not wipes aren't caused by the mis-pulls but by people bringing adds into the fight. I just don't like a non-tank deciding that we have enough people to start it up, I want whoever's planning to tank it making that decision.

    Speaking of Ordos, that's the fight with the consistently worst tanking performances of any I've seen anywhere except maybe Celestials... more often than not the tank moves back just far enough so THEY are out of the first circle but leave the boss in it and force the melee who care about not standing in fire to attack from the front. Thing is, even with the puddles causing a lot of damage (the tooltip says 50K/s but I can't imagine it's actually that high) most of the time there's plenty of splash healing going around to cover it off so there isn't really much reason to move. From that perspective it's the better choice as a dps to stand in the puddle and do max dps but that isn't exactly setting a good example for the peons to follow on other fights. The other examples of bad tanking on that fight are ones that run all the way across after each puddle, basically running you out of room with the boss still at half health. Bonus points to two tanks who ping-pong the boss back and forth from side to side. My personal preference from a simplicity standpoint are the ones who just park the boss in the middle of the fight area and tank him in place, giving ranged a full 360 degrees to spread out around him (I really hate it when other people blow me up, more when I die when I land on a toon who can't do anything about it) and just burn him down.

    There's a bit of a disconnect between "be nice to tanks" and "LFR should be all one-shots". If you wipe on an LFR fight, chances are the tanks will be blamed... if we were able to cultivate a culture where tanks can actually have an attempt or two to learn the role on a fight then you might see more tanks in LFR but since that doesn't generally happen you're left with those who just don't care much with a few quality folks thrown in for flavour. I saw a recommendation somewhere that I can support to some degree (don't think it was here but maybe it was), make all LFR fights single-tank and don't give the tank any real wipe mechanics to deal with... make the job boring and easy. Not sure what the downside of that would be but I'd expect faster queues overall and maybe even more players queuing as tanks.

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    1. That one tank one was me. I've suggested it countless times, even back to the DS days when LFR was first added. It should have been done a long time ago.

      About a year ago I made a post about what would get me to tank the LFR and the one tank thing was the #1 thing on it. It should be 1 tank only, not even sure why they make 2 tank fights that require communication in a situation where you know there will be no communication. Lets not even talk about the fact that in the US they have completely Fed up the whole system and 90% of the time the group has people with 2 different languages in it.

      I love the ordos strat where everyone stands on him and only the bombs run out and you never move him. So much easier.

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