Monday Random Thoughts

- Got my cloak this week on my mage.

- That makes two new cloaks in two weeks.

- Six total now, 5 different classes.

- My mage one shot it of course, but at a 539 item level and experience of doing the ranged once twice already I would have expected nothing less.

- Druid should be getting it this week being I only need one more runestone.

- So it will all come down to if I play this week on it, which I probably will.

- At least when it comes to doing the four celestial bosses I do not need to look for a group.

- Have to love being able to solo work bosses.

- When I did it this week trying to get some healing gear I just walked up and pulled.

- I love watching the reactions of people around you.

- They all stand and watch for a little bit when they see someone go in to solo one.

- It is like, if he survives 30 seconds I will join, or I will join if he gets it to 50%, or something.

- Now with shared tags it seems like people start coming up and hitting it.

- So soloing a world boss isn't really about soloing it.

- It is about how long and can you keep yourself alive until some help comes.

- And then being able to solo it as a secondary, in case no many come.

- I can't wait to see what it will be like when I get the tank cloak and can die and actually not die once every 2 minutes.

- The amount I can solo will really go up I am sure.

- Remember the song that goes "I like big butts and I can not lie"

- Well when I tank I sometimes sing "I like bear butts and I can not lie"

- I even have other lyrics for it too.

- Do you ever do anything like that or am I just insane?

- Don't answer that.

- I think I need to get another druid to 90.

- Do you think the lack on new five mans hurt the expansion?

- Sometimes like the ICC 5 mans or the HoT 5 mans.

- I think they would have been a better place to add 496 catch up gear than the timeless island stuff.

- For various reasons.

- First off it would have been actual content instead of just opening chests and getting them.

- Or not getting them, as was the luck of some of my characters.

- Most junk my second mage got was not for the class, it was always a plate or a mail piece which really are not very cloth friendly.

- Good thing I have so many of each extra.

- Bounced my mail pieces between characters in mail the other day.

- I have 18 mails filled with mail pieces.

- And I used them more than any other having so many hunters and shaman.

- I need to start disenchanting them.

- Best part of that is I disenchant them on a server that I need the money on and sell the sha crystals there.

- It is like sending gold across faction lines and server lines.

- Does that make me evil or does that make me smart?

- I will go for smart.

- And evil.

- I am against the term welfare gear but timeless gear was welfare gear.

- Timeless 535 gear however I would say is not.

- With the exception of the one guaranteed one you had to work for your 535 gear.

- Either getting it as a lucky drop, just like raid gear.

- Or getting it by earning 50,000 coins and buying it, just like valor gear.

- But dungeon gear would have been better.

- It would have been better itemized.

- I would have had gem slots.

- It would have had 2 stats.

- And more importantly, it would have been actual content.

- But I know why they did not add new dungeons.

- That legendary quest line.

- LFR works as the new dungeons.

- Not only for gear, but if you want to complete the legendary line you needed to do those.

- So dungeons would have been left behind.

- Guess that is why they did not add them.

- As nice as it would have been to have new 5 mans they would not have been a practical time investment to make when you were actively trying to funnel everyone into LFR.

- I supported no tier and no trinkets in LFR for next expansion.

- I've changed my mind.

- It should be there.

- If they want LFR to be considered raiding, it should have raid gear.

- It is as simple as that.

- Otherwise, remove LFR and keep giving us updated new 5 man content.

- I would have so much rathered have new 5 man content each tier than have a new tier of LFR.

- And without tier gear and good trinkets, LFR is no longer raiding, which means it no longer serves its purpose.

- Just my opinion of course.

- I've ran enough LFR to believe I can call myself an expert at knowledge of what groups are like in there.

- Both good and bad, and there are both.

- Even if it is only one elf's observations, it is one expert elf's observations.

- As an expert in knowledge of the LFR I have come to a few opinions based on what I have seen.

- The LFR has completely failed at its intended purpose.

- It is not quick bite sized content as it was marketed as.

- It is not as easy as it should be if you happen to get a group that is "appropriate" gear level for it.

- And it is most absolutely, definitely, positively too hard for a group of people that are of the "appropriate" gear level and the "appropriate" skill level intended for it.

- Just imagine this.

- 496 item level to get it means all timeless gear, the one 535 piece, and maybe grinding for the 489 weapons and winning one piece off a celestial to get to that 496 item level.

- None of it gemmed, none of it enchanted, none of it reforged.

- Either because none of that stuff is worth doing that to it even if you wanted to, or because the level of skill of the LFR player is the type of player it is designed for and they just don't do those things.

- Now you have tanks with less then, or around, 500K life.

- Damage dealers that can not break 40K at most.

- Healers that will go oom on any fight that lasts more than 2 minutes, if that much.

- Now, these are the people LFR is designed for, it is intended for them to be doing it.

- Do you think it is going to be capable of being done but 25 of those people?

- If you answered yes I have one question for you.

- What the hell are you smoking?

- Make that two questions.

- And can you share?

- Because that must be some good stuff.

- I did a dungeon on one of my hunters, just needed a little to cap.

- I was doing over 600K on the bosses because they died so quick, and was climbing, not on the way down.

- I was one shotting the trash basically.

- We moved constantly.

- The group joked "thanks for the carry" as they actually did nothing because they couldn't as everything died that quick.

- Now THAT is how LFR should be when a raider steps into it.

- But on a different scale being it is meant for 25 people.

- It should be a complete joke where the raider can basically turn the run into a super easy quick run just for fun.

- Just like that dungeon was.

- I love end of the expansion dungeons when we so over gear them we can speed run them.

- It should not be designed like it is now that without a few actual raiders you can not down anything.

- A friend of mine does downfall LFR on multiple characters each week to try and get the pets off the first two bosses there.

- Thank god I got them both from normal or I would probably want to do the same.

- But he said he always ends up leaving on garrosh.

- The pets drop off the first two and it is not worth wiping with people that will not learn.

- I don't blame him.

- I agree, and that is why I say, him being there should be enough to make garrosh an easy fight for them.

- And that is the problem with LFR.

- You need raiders to get the content done.

- Now, with no decent trinkets, no tier gear, what incentive is there for raiders to go there?

- Just to get that last tier piece, that trinket they were unlucky with, that is why they used to go.

- Unless they nerf LFR by about 70% of what it currently is, it will not be completable without raiders there.

- And that is the problem with LFR.

- It is not designed for the people it is intended to be for but designed for raiders to be there to help them.

- If they are removing the incentives for raiders they can not keep designing the LFR to require some raiders to help a group get by.

- So now it is the time for blizzard to adopt the suggestion I made 2 years ago when they first released the LFR.

- Remove the LFR.

- Replace tie LFR with 5 mans that are the raid in bite sized difficulty.

- Have it drop the same gear, without tier of course being they are 5 mans now.

- There were go, solved the LFR issue with it requiring raiders, solved the catch up gear because new dungeons will keep coming out, and solved the time issue because no longer would they be hour waits with long completion times but quick waits and 5 minute runs.

- Fixed LFR, gave us more 5 man content, and make it more friendly to the lesser skilled players while still allowing them to see all the raid content.

- After all, if the LFR is intended to allow non raiders to see raid content, it would be better to do it this way.

- And it will stop giving people the wrong impression that they are now raiders because they did the LFR.

- I am not a heroic raider even if I do dabble in them.

- They are not raiders even if they dabble in LFR.

- People are not honest with themselves, they should be.

- So changing LFR into 5 mans would be the best way to handle things for many reasons.

- It will never happen because it actually makes sense.

- Or maybe it just seems like it makes sense to me and it would end up being one of those horrible ideas in practice that sounded good on paper.

- Kind of like what warlrods is shaping up to be.

- Idea sounds good on paper but for an entire expansion, it will be horrible in practice.

- From the concept of "time travel" even if we know it is alternate reality because most people can not and will not be able to grasp that concept.

- Can someone remind me what is taking warlords so long to be released?

- No seriously, it offers nothing, nothing except a more complex multi layered farm mini game.

- Mists did not take this long to come out and mists had more original content than any expansion to date.

- It had pet battles and that alone being it was so integrated into the entire game from level 1 to level cap was a huge task and was more than everything warlords has to offer combined together, times 10.

- It had a new class with three new specs that required making class specific stuff, designing, and balancing

- It has a new race that needed to be built from the ground up and an island for the starting experience.

- I could go on, but you already see how what mists offered was 10 times, 20 times, maybe even 100 times, more than anything warlords is offering.

- So what is taking them so long?

- Seriously, warlords and what we are getting with it could have been introduced as a patch.

- It really is not offering anything.

- And blizzard is still screwing it up even worse.

- Moving capitals now.

- And Lore, I believe it was but could be wrong, says that no time was wasted on the art work in frostfire and shadowmoon.

- And I am saying, the checks in the mail.

- Guess what lore and I have in common.

- We are both lying.

- What is the main difference?

- He just gets paid to lie.

- Lets see, believe him saying no time was wasted on them or the 1000s of people that were in the alpha and beta that said they looked nice but where just not finished.

- Don't know about you, but sounds like they wasted time and art work there to me if 1000s of people said they looked nice.

- Lore really needs to get better at lying if he wants to move up the corporate ladder there.

- If no one had seen them you could have gotten away with saying that.  Once people see it, you can not get away with the "we didn't make them yet" defense.

- I saw a post over on the godmothers page where she compared her old female dwarf to the new female dwarf in an image.

- What has been seen can not be unseen.

- Oh my god that is ugly.

- Ugly is not even a word for it, it is horrifying.

- I will not be able to get the image out of my head.

- And horde think they have the ugly characters?

- They have not see the new female dwarf.

- It is beyond horrible.

- Don't get me started on the new male model.

- Otherwise known as shrek.

- I do appreciate the skill and time it takes to update all these images.

- It is well beyond what I would ever be capable of doing even if I spent the time to learn.

- But it doesn't mean it is worth waiting for an expansion for.

- They could have made new models and released them as they made them.

- They did not need to hold up an expansion for them just so they can call it an expansion feature.

- But I guess they had to, because as I mentioned, warlords has nothing else to offer.

- They need to stop charging us for expansions, we pay a subscription.

- Once you buy the game that should be it, just keep giving us patches to keep us subscribing.

- There should never be a new expansion to buy.

- When they make something new, add it as a patch.

- Simple as that.

- Remember at blizzcon when they said warlords was further along then we might expect.

- Remember the people on the floor saying it was the most polished preview they had ever seen and it looked ready for release already.

- What happened?

- Did ghostcrawler leaving really hurt them that bad?

- I know some people believe that to be true.

- That when he left the game it was put in the hands of people that were not gamers.

- Not saying I liked some of the stuff ghostcrawler did, or even most of the stuff he did, but at least as one of the men piloting the ship we were moving forward, not backwards.

- At least he seemed passionate about gaming even if I disagreed with most of what he said.

- He was a gamer.

- I would rather complain about him doing something I disliked, then be here complaining about blizzard doing nothing at all.

- And nothing sure seems like what they have been doing.

- Funny that we might see another blizzcon before what they announced at the last one is even out.

- Is their big reveal for this years blizzcon going to be the same big revels as they last one?

- The big revel, everything we promised last blizzard was wrong.

- You will not be getting new capitals, there will be on alliance having the one rare moment to be happy as they get part of the black temple as their home, there will be no heirloom tab, there will no problems with the stat squish that requires us to buff you instead of doing it right and there will be some amazingly ugly updated models.

- So this blizzcon will be telling us all about the things they said we were getting last blizzcon that it turns out we are not getting.

- Awesome big revel.

- If I were a stock holder I would be raising all hell right now.

- Blizzard is falling flat on its face and from the outside looking in they seem like they are fine with that.

- Is this the type of company you would want to invest your money in?

- Hell no.

- Do you think they are going to make a legendary quest line that makes us bring alts through LFR again?

- I think so.

- Sadly.

- If they do then I hope what the end result is does not come out being like the end result of this one was.

- Because if you want to raid the legendary is required, more so for a damage dealer.

- It is not optional.

- Previously if you had someone in your group with the legendary it felt like a bonus, even if a small one.

- Now, it feels like if you have someone in your group without it, they are not trying, or they are holding you back.

- Not saying having the legendary makes you better, it just makes you have more potential.

- And I am not talking turning doing 200K into 205K in the right hands.

- I am saying turning 200K into 260K in the right hands.

- And that is why it is mandatory.

- Because I have seen fights where the cloak was 30%+ of the damage done.

- Speaking of numbers that are out of line, I managed 338K on my rogue on ordos this week.

- My crappy rogue.

- That is not even 550 item level.

- Without the special island buffs.

- Can someone say I had lucky cape procs?

- I can.

- So see, that legendary takes me, someone that might, just might, be able to pull 200K on a character before 550 item level that I am not very good at and lets me do over 300K with some lucky procs.

- The legendary is too powerful.

- Which is exactly why the legendary is mandatory.

- I joined an ordos group on my druid as guardian and another tank joined the group and whispered me, do you want me to take it, I can if you can't handle it.

- I clicked on him, saw 494K life and then looked at my 1.3M and said, I think I can handle it.

- I was actually happy, usually if I join an ordos with another tank that is capable I drop group.

- It is a one tank fight, and I want to be the tank that tanks it.

- It is a great vengeance cheesing fight and I like to see what I can do on it.

- I wonder if that guy even looked at my life, or his life for that matter.

- He might have been experience and it was his way of saying he knew what he was doing.

- That was actually very nice of him.

- However I do not care if you are an experienced player or not, you are going to get crushed by ordos if you are under 500K life unless you have a dedicated healer and even then you would be on a clock, a clock that was how long their mana held out.

- I ended 4th in damage done and 3rd in healing in a group with 7 healers.

- Yeah, I think I was able to handle it.

- That is also why I love tanking ordos, it is a chance to see what I can push out.

- My druid had some other fun adventures this weekend.

- I am still trying to get a hang on healing with it.

- I can not figure out when it is best to use tree form, or what to use while in it.

- I do lifebloom spam on everyone even if regrowth is instant but with my mana I can not do more than a few regrowths before I am completely out of mana.

- Tanked SoO normal, looking for healing gear, got none, so still sitting a 528 healing item level.

- Funny, when I did not have a healing spec I kept seeing healing leather drop.

- As soon as I decided to start collecting it, the drop rate dried up.

- When we got to thok I switched to heal as we do that with 3 healers and one tank.

- We wiped because I was basically useless as a healer.

- We did three attempts before I switched to my priest for that one fight.

- At least I was consistent on my druid.

- 69K, 68K, 68K, on my three attempts.

- Sadly I was consistently bad.

- Brought in my priest and we downed it then switched back to tank.

- Guess I am just not ready to be a druid healer.

- Part gear issue, mostly skill issue I think.

- Probably would have done better if I had more than 10K spirit.

- Asked a druid healer I know what she runs with and she said 21K leaves her comfortable, not too much and not too little but if she had to stress some bigger more expensive heals it leaves her room to work with.

- Maybe I will reevaluate myself once I have more spirit.

- Might not be completely me being bad but partly me not having the tools to get better, as in spirit.

- I will tell you healing thok on a druid is like DPSing thok on a hunter.

- It is just unfair to everyone else in the game.

- Interrupt?  What interrupt?

- I just keep casting to keep my little tree heart content.

- I just did my thing, never spell locked, never even needed to worry about being spell locked.

- It was great fun healing thok on my druid.

- It is a nightmare healing it on anyone else.

- Oh, more druid stories.

- Doing my runestone collecting I zone into ToT 4, as a healer of course, being I don't tank LFRs.

- There is a shaman DPSing that queued up as a healer.

- Every time I see a healer DPSing it is always a shaman, I swear I saw it happen 5 times this week with a healer DPSing and all 5 times it is a shaman.

- There is one tank and it seems that tank is one that has no clue.

- He goes left at the top of the stairs to clear the adds.

- Who the hell goes left.

- He is full clearing the trash.

- I think he must be a rookie.

- Inspect, just shy of 1M health, mostly normal gear, some flex some LFR.

- It sure seems like someone that should have done this before.

- He keeps doing stupid things, pulling stuff so far out of the way for no reason.

- That is when the three people I am there with and I come to the conclusion, he either just bought the character, or is a raider as a damage dealer and got enough off spec stuff to make a tank set and figured he would give it a try.

- I lean toward he bought the account because if he raided enough to get that much off spec gear he should at least know the routes.

- Even a DPS sees the route a tank uses and would be able to copy it, this guy did not even know the routes.

- And as he had the legendary, that means he would have had to do ToT 4 before.

- At least once.

- So my conclusion, he bought the account.

- We get to the boss and are waiting on another tank.

- The shaman says, should I switch to heals.

- At least this one owned up to DPSing, most just play stupid.

- I said, you switch to healing, I will switch to tank, and we can get this going, sound good?

- They said, yeah.

- I switch to tank and must have really upset the poor tank.

- I pull, he tries to taunt, but my threat just out paces him and I grab the boss back without even taunting.

- I solo tank the first boss basically.

- On the way to the second boss we get another tank.

- So I say, I will switch back to healing and told the shaman, you can switch back to DPS, it will speed things up and he is not really needed to heal.

- But apparently I hurt the other tanks ego by switching to tank and solo tanking the first boss.

- Rightfully so too, he queued as tank, it was wrong of me to take control in a fill in situation.

- I would not have taken over like that if he didn't act like someone that bought the character.

- Either way, to "fix" his ego he runs into the twins and makes a head long run into them and pulls before I can switch back to healing.

- And before most people where there.

- Guess it was good I did not switch yet because the other tank had not made it in yet.

- It ended up being a very long fight with only half the damage dealers there and only 2 healers there.

- Good thing it is not a heavy healing fight.

- Even better thing I was on a grossly over geared bear for it.

- I ended up, just like on the first boss, taking control and I was able to keep myself healed.

- When the fight was over I switched to healing and we finished it up.

- Should I mention he managed to die 3 times on the last boss.

- I guess it is a good thing I had aggro the entire time for the first two bosses or he might have found a way to die on them too.

- And this is partly why I do not tank LFR.

- It is the dealing with personality that can some times be the hardest part.

- I was talking to someone in guild yesterday and I said LFR is harder than heroic raiding when done by the people it is intended for on a social level.

- He said no way, heroic raiding is about skill and ability and team work and so forth and so on and LFR is just about going in and blowing things up.  LFR is easier.

- I said, but you missed the key part of that, when done by the people it is intended for on a social level.

-  I said if you are with all skilled players trying to down a heroic boss you are all, in theory, working for the same goal as a team and have the skills and abilities to do so where as in the LFR you have varied skill levels, each person there for the own reasons, and many do not work well with others are is obvious based on the toxic behavior in them.

- So trying to do content with people that want to do it (heroic) is easier than trying to do content with people that just want to make life hell for everyone (LFR).

- He agreed to disagree.

- I said, you are just looking at it from the wrong perspective.

- You are looking at it from the basic difficulty of the fight and I am looking at it from the human factor.

- He is looking at it from a pure mechanic factor and that of course means heroic is more difficult, heck heroic and LFR are not even in the same league of each other.

- I am talking about the group of players you are doing it with and how they react and what they are capable of doing and if they are capable of working together.

- With that said, LFR is harder than heroic raiding any day, hands down.

- Even one shotting bosses in LFR is harder than working your ass off for 200 wipes before you down something in heroic.

- But, as he said, it is my opinion and my opinion is I would rather wipe with decent people than one shot with the toxic crusaders.

- Listening to people in the LFR makes my brain cells rot.

- Sometimes I feel dumber just having read what they said.

- It is like trade on steroids.

- Because we are trapped in there with them and they know that.

- I recall someone resembling me saying, when LFR was first added, that this would happen and it would keep getting worse.

- It is not like it should surprise anyone that when you put a jerk into a situation where they have anonymity and a captive audience they will step it up a level or three.

- Speaking of jerks like that, another ToT 4 on my mage this time, we wipe and the toxic community clicks into over drive.

- Kick all DPS under the tank.

- I look, tank is 14th, so that would mean kicking a couple, but the tank is doing 86K in 14th, which of ToT is pretty freaking awesome if your 14th player is doing 86K.

- From 11th up was over 100K.

- Usually we did not even have one person or only one person over 100K when this first came out and had no problem.

- This is the second week in a row I heard that "kick everyone under the tank" yelp from the dim witted masses on the same fight.

- I wonder if there is some sort of troll script these guys all share and work from.

- On this fight blame the DPS.

- On this fight blame the tanks.

- On this fight blame the healers.

- Do they even think before they speak.

- You know why we wiped?

- The tanks never moved the lion and tanked it in the middle of the wind.

- The melee froze, the healers lost line of sight on the tanks, the tanks died, we all died.

- WTF does any of that have to do with the DPS?

- Sure, you can blame the DPS for not downing the ice blocked people fast enough, but they should never have been ice blocked to begin with.

- Blame the tanks for tanking the damn thing where they did.

- If you are going to blame people, blame the right people.

- I was tanking a flex on my druid and one tanked klaxxi and after the fight I said, we have to kick everyone below the tank.

- Of course I was top DPS while tanking on my druid.

- But I said it as a joke.

- Maybe the people that said it in the raid there meant it as a joke.

- Can't tell over the internet sometimes.

- But I don't think so and even if it were a joke this was a group of random people that do not know you and they would not know it was a joke.

- Help everyone in an LFR if you ever try to say a joke like that, put a :P or ;) or something to make people realize that it is not to be taken seriously.

- Needless to say, all the toxic hate came out after the wipe, everyone blaming everyone else.

- People are strange, and that is why LFR is harder than it need to be, because of the people.

- Have you noticed the ToT to SoO trend I have noticed?

- The groups I get for ToT are better than SoO groups, which should be better.

- I often see myself with 4 or 5 people over 200K, maybe even over 300K in the average ToT, even on a sunday.

- In an SoO I am usually sitting #1 on my new alt hunter doing 120K.

- 120K would not even be top 10 in a ToT.

- I think I know why, at least why for me.

- I do ToT three on all my characters each week to try and get pets.

- Maybe others do as well.

- I think the big part is people that know how to play go for the older ones on their alts because they just want to get them done.

- So slowly advancing a legendary on an alt through ToT only is better then finding those worse groups in the harder content.

- People going for gear go for the newer ones and that is why there might be worse groups there.

- Can swear I have been in some ToT runs recently that the worse player in there was better than the best player in an SoO run.

- We, me and two friends, zone into SoO 2 and look at the tanks, both have less than 500K life.  Fully buffed.

- My last ToT had one tank with 1.4M and one tank with 1.1M.

- Shouldn't it be the other way around?

- Seems like the better players steer clear of SoO unless there is something they want from it or are trying to rush their legendary line.

- Seems the better players know ToT 3 is the best of the best for speed runs for valor in the LFR setting.

- And a shot at 2 pets.

- One of which consistently sell of over 100K on most servers.

- Now if that is not a good reason and why better players run ToT 3 I don't know what is.

- Smoother runs, minimal trash, easy fights (outside of the maze part for some), and two pets you can get, one which is worth a small fortune.

- It is why I do it all the time, even when I completely quit doing LFR for a while I would still pop in and do that one on my main each week.

- Once I get the pet however, not sure if I will keep going back.

- But I will always have someone coming up the legendary ladder.

- I could do it like I did my monk and my mage.

- They did their entire legendary quest line from secrets on in ToT 3 only for the most part.

- Took a very long time, but at least I only did the one I wanted to do.

- And being this is a game isn't the whole idea to have fun doing what I want to do?

- Sounds reasonable to me.

- Just wish SoO was not such a nightmare.

- I wish there were a way to rank people that would not end up being abused.

- I've met some really nice people (even if not good players) in LFR and I would love to run with them again and I've met some horrible people (even if they were good players) that if I never saw them again it would be too soon.

- If they had a ranking system which pushed people with bad scores to the back and people with good scores to the front, maybe a 6 hours wait time for an LFR might teach them to stop being assholes when in the group.

- Nah, that would never work.

- People would abuse it.

- Or worse yet, one of those assholes will get someone else in trouble because that his how they work.

- One LFR I was in this week, on protectors, there is a priest not accepting rez so someone says, kick the priest.

- Two seconds later the pop up comes up, people click it, person is gone.

- But it is not the priest.

- It was a warrior.

- Someone said, why did we kick the warrior, he was top DPS.

- Number 2 DPS says, because I am here with 8 people from my guild and I want to be top DPS.

- He basically tricked the group into kicking someone and had his friends set it up so the vote to kick would pop up after he said to kick the priest.

- Now that my friends is a world class asshole.

- Two people that were with the warrior called him out for the jerk he was and dropped group, and those were two of the better people there.

- There was nothing anyone could do against them, they had enough people to control the run.

- And that is why a voting system would never work.

- Poor warrior would have a negative on his record for getting kicked when the only thing he did was being a decent player and beat the wrong person with the power to kick in DPS.

- But it is still nice to dream that we could end up getting a group with all the good people and some how phase all those people out of the game forever.

- I do not care if they pay the same 15 I do, that 15 does not give them the right to act like that.

- Never has, never will, and it will never get better until blizzard starts to moderate their game.

- So, it will never change.

- Have a great day.

Why Warlords is Late Reason #6: Wasted Art Assignments

There are many reasons we can guess about what has been the delay with warlords, and I know I did not post about the first five but those are actually quite obvious.  So I will start at reason number six which was just announced.

They are moving the horde and alliance hubs from their places in the starting zones to points near ashran.  Now I am not in beta so I can not see exactly how they are moving them, but unless they move the actual cities there, which I know they will not do because you can not exactly move karabor because it is not some generic city but a city with a history of being exactly where it is, all the art work put into making these places into hubs to begin with is now wasted time.  If they just happen to turn into quest hubs we spend a little time in and then move along to forget about they would not need the amazing level of detail blizzard is well known for including in their hub cities of the past like the shrines, dalaran or shat, which essentially means any of that extra time spent on them was wasted art assignments.

So no only did they spend time developing the art for these two cities, one for the horde and one for the alliance, that is now all wasted time, they need to develop two new cities at the level of hub design late in the development process wasting even more time.  I am sure they will steal a lot from the cities they already made as that would be the smart thing to do, but it is still all just wasted time.

While I am against the idea of moving our hubs for the reasons of time we all must realize that in a way this is a good move for the expansion and this is where the hub cities should have been to begin with but blizzard, if anything, has shown throughout history they are not a very forward thinking company.

It would have been nice to have my horde hub city close to my horde garrison and my alliance hub city close to my alliance garrison but if they make a way, as in a portal, for us to get from our city to our garrison and back then where our garrison is really should not matter much.  This remains to be seen.  Don't count on blizzard to do the right thing here, they want us to spend a lot of time traveling, it is how they intend to make their content last longer and why they are removing flight.

As for why this is a good change I will play devils advocate here.

Putting our hub cities close to the new world PvP zone means both hub cities are close to each other and close to the PvP zone.  This is a good thing because as it was there were no two places in the world we could have been further away from each other than the horde and alliance main cities were.  Personally I would not have even minded a single city once again like shat or dal.

Also, they figure and quite possibly rightfully so, that more people will join in ashran if the hub cities were closer to it and we did not need to fly, or make that not fly, all the way across the world to get to it if we wanted to participate like we would if the hub cities remained where they current were.

However, and this is bad news for the people that are hoping flying will be added in 6.1, this is also a sign that they are very seriously considering not adding flying at all.  Because they know that people would have hated the travel to and from the new world PvP zone they had to move the hub cities closer.  So having the hub cities right there on the border means there is one less reason people can say they wish there was the ability to fly.  This will be a real shot to the heart of the people that were holding out hope that flying would be added to warlords sooner or later.  Sorry to break it to you, but this move is a huge sign pointing to the fact they are thinking of not adding it at all.

In the end I just have one question for blizzard.

Why put in all this effort, and give the alliance some moment of excitement thinking we would spend an entire expansion as what becomes the black temple being our home, and then move it like that?

This has to be a blow to the alliance player base that constantly gets shit on to begin with and it has to be an even bigger blow to the development process time wise.  Could you have not just put portals in the new cities that were far away from the PvP zone that took you there and then ones there that took you back to try and get more interest in the zone instead of moving the hubs there?  Just let the alliance have their one moment in the sun in a beautiful city with a storied history.

I understand the change blizzard, I even support the reasoning behind the change, I just do not understand why it was not handled a better way but I guess I should have known better because blizzards track record is really spotty when it comes to things like this.

What do you think?

Are you going to miss (even if most of us never saw them in use) those beautiful cities in frostfire and shadowmoon that were originally intended to be our homes that they spent so much time on, or will you just forget about it and stay in whatever hub they give us and not even think about why some huge city is so well done and so under used?

As an alliance player, how do you feel about the only decent thing the alliance has received in the last 5 years, talabor, being taken away before we even get a chance to see it?

As a pro flier, how do you feel that this could quite possibly be another sign pointing toward an expansion where we never see flying?

Immersion and Flying: A Short Story

I was once a hero of Azeroth having had saved the plant from destruction, take over or the extermination of its inhabitants on more than one occasion.  I've used my own abilities combined with those of my fellow heroes to achieve more than a few notches on my belt that would label me as a hero.  I've managed to tame of the most noble of airborne beasts to carry me on their back into battle because a true hero flies a grand beast.  Yet one morning, the morning I received a notice that I was once needed again, called back into battle, I found myself having forgotten how to fly and a hero no more.  Here is my story.

I grab my bow, the same one I have been using that was given to me by an ancient many years ago after I was sent on a quest to complete tasks not many would be able to do, as give a whistle for Fang to come join my side, as I go to answer the call, the call to once again go into battle because the heroes of azeroth are needed.  Once more me and my trusty companion will be called into action to do what we have done so many times before it seems.  We must save Azeroth from a threat that not even we fully understand.

Word has it that there is a world out there, one that seems eerily similar to one we have heard of from our very own past but it is not the same world, and there are orcs out there on that world planning to invade our world.  We can not let this happen, not again.  So many people died when orcs first invaded the world to have it happen again would be a failure on my part and the part of ever other adventurer out there that calls themselves a hero.

Once more we will step through the dark portal to take the offensive like we had some years back and bring the fight to the enemy, but not the same enemy lays beyond the portal any longer, a new enemy does, a new enemy and old enemy all rolled into one.  Like I said, it was not a threat that even we could fully understand.

I jump on my hippogryph and head over to the castle so I can get a mission assessment before I head off to this world, the one that seems like something from our past but is not.  I travel there as quick as possible when called because heroes, real heroes, do not dilly dally, they make haste and like the term or not it seems I am one of those heroes, everyone seems to greet me as such so I do my best to act like one.  Once there I am briefed before heading out from stormwind by some of the kings highest advisers, I am included in all the conversations because, after all, I have earned that right, I am a hero.

I head out, once more on my noble hippogryph and move as fast as I can to get to the staging point for the defense of the only world I've ever known as home.  It will not be the first time Fang and I have looked into the face of extermination and said, no, we will not die today, we will not lie down for you, we will not fold, we will win.  We have fought such great odds, we have been beaten, we have been broken, but we always come back for more because that is what we do, we are heroes.

Once we arrive we are instructed that we will be leaving for this alternate reality in just under two hours.  I want to go now, there is the giant portal in front of me, the swirl of lights seem a different color from what I last remember when I saw it first so many years ago.  It must have been the change in color that first alerted the people whom still stand guard there up to this day that something might be going on.  After so many years of being dormant the change of color must have been a sign, the sign, the one that caused our leaders to assemble us all here to embark on a new task, to save our world once more from blood crazed invaders who wish to do us harm for no reason other than we have something they want, Azeroth.

With two hours before we are to embark I decided I had more than ample time to head back and get some additional supplies.  Time is limited because I do not want to miss the window to go as part of the first to step foot through, which might be short.  If the commander said two hours, then two hours it would be, and I would be there and I would be ready.

I open my satchel and see I am a bit low on potions and start to consider that perhaps I should grab some additional ones, ones I do not normally carry, because I remember what it is like to go to a new world or a new land.  It might have been a few years since my hippogryph landed on new soil, but I do recall that sometimes when you first reach new shores you might be in for a surprise.  Making sure I get some healing potions might be in my best interest.

I whistle for Fang and say, lets go boy, as we head off back to the city, we have only a couple of hours to make sure we have everything we need.  Who knows how long it will be once we step through that portal before we can return here.  It is better to carry too much of a commodity than to not have enough when you really need it.

I fly over as fast as I can to the best alchemist I know, a gnome in Ironforge and ask him for 40 of his best healing potions.  He tells me that he has heard of the new task and where we are going, it seems that everyone has been stopping here to stock up.  He mentions he is out of a specific herb he needs to make the potions for me, but if I could get him the herb he needs and bring him some additional herbs he will give me all the potions I need for cost.  I would normally question anyone that said they would give me something at cost but not him, he is an honest gnome, a friend, and a decent person.

I need to get to the summit to get the herbs he requested and keeping track of the time every second matters, there will be no time to spare.  Take the tram, a taxi or fly?  A wrong choice could mean I miss the window of opportunity to get into the fray and I can not miss that, the king asked me personally to be one of the first ones through the portal.  I can not let the king down and more so I can not let the people of Azeroth down.  There are innocents all over the place and if I fail and the orcs come pouring through the portal those very innocents would be the ones in harms way and I can not have that.  Speed is of the essence and with that in mind I mount up on my trusty hippogryph and take off yelling faster faster as I head to stormwind so I an jump over to the jade forest and head up to the summit to get the herbs needed.

I take direct routes, the most direct routes, it is why I manually fly anywhere because the flight masters, while helpful and more peaceful as you do not need to control the fight, you can just relax the entire way, always seem to take me on a scenic view of the world.  I've seen the world a million times, I've shed blood for this world, I've shed blood on this world, I do not need to see everything a million and one times, I need to get somewhere and that means never taking the offer from our friendly flight masters because they have oddly enough trained their beasts of burden to take the most indirect routes imaginable.  Routes you most definitely do not want to use if you are in a hurry to get somewhere.

Not to mention, over the years I have seen far too many things happen while flying above the world, things that needed my attention, a rare and dangerous beast attacking a village that required me to land immediately and save the inhabitants.  The horde invading a small village in the middle of nowhere and I would be the only one that could help. The rarely seen herbs and ore that could not be passed up.  The call for help form someone near by that caused me to change direction.  All things I could never do while on a flight masters path. 

Those taxis are trained so well that no matter how much you yell or beg or plead, they will not stop, they will not wait, they will not change direction.  The village would be destroyed, those rare herbs and minerals will go unfound, maybe forever, and that call for help will end up unanswered.  The taxi does not care that something needs to be done, that someone is in need of help, that you have changed your mind on where you needed to go, or that you are in a hurry to get there.  You have no control over it.  You are weak to do anything and I can not, will not, ever be that person.  I am a hero of Azeroth, I am not weak, I control my own path and I stop for those in need and that is why I ride my noble hippogryph.  I keep it well taken care of, feed it well, and give it love, and in return it is always there when I need it and will carry me wherever I need to go on a moments notice.

Once I arrive in the summit I see the herbs that my friend had asked me to retrieve for him and land there to gather it.   Suddenly a tiger jumps at me, and I am forced to react.  I do not wish to kill you beast I shout but I will if I must, I finish, as I slay the beast.  I did not wish it any harm, I just wanted to gather the needed herbs so I have the materials needed to increase the chances for success on my current mission.  As quickly as I can I call to my hippogryph again and move to the next bushel to gather some more herbs.  A few small fights, a few time wasting fights against beasts I have no desire to kill and no time to spare to do so, and I have what is needed.

I hearth home which happens to be still at the shrine which does work out perfect as I am able to get one of the mages to send me directly to ironforge from there and I do so.  I rush to the gnome and wait for him to prepare my needed potions as I look to the time and see it is running short.  Too many battles, too much time wasted, but I can still make it, I should still make it.  All thanks to my hippogryph because if I had been forced to take a tram or a taxi and to run from herb to herb it would have meant more time traveling, more time fighting, more time wasted when I only had a short window to work with any lost time would have taken me from my destiny to be one of the first through the portal.

The gnome, my good friend who has always been there to help me, hands me the potions and I extend my hand with a few coins as was our original agreement.  He closes my hand with his short pudgy fingers and says, just do what you need to do hunter, stop them from coming here, do not let the past repeat itself.  These are on me, now get out of here, time is running short.  I smile and tell him I will do everything I can.  He says, I know you will, and I mount up and take off in a hurry as my time is getting short.

The flight, even with the most direct route that could be taken, takes a long time and I can hear the sound of time passing in my head as if the tick tick tick is beating in my ears but really is it my heart racing that I hear.  It feels as if those two hours passed more like minutes as my adventures always seemed to have to be rushed to be able to get all the tasks I wanted to get done in the small time I was allotted to do them.

I arrive just in time with only a few minutes to spare.  I pat my hippogrpyh on the head and say, good job girl.  She screeches and I feed her a treat putting my hand out in front of her and letting her peak it from there.  We wait with many of the other past heroes of Azeroth.  We have all done great and wonderful things and we are all ready to once again put out lives and limbs on the line in an effort to save the world from danger. 

I stand beside all the races, even those of the horde, even orcs, and I can feel the importance of this mission when even the orcs are trying to stop an orc invasion.  A shiver runs up my spine at the thought of that.  Just think of what could be coming if orcs would be willing to kill their very own ancestors, even if from an alternate reality, to keep them from coming here.  When you would be willing to kill your own father to stop an invasion that must mean that it is something they are really worried about.  If they are worried about it enough to kill their own family, then I most definitely need to be afraid because I do not even share blood with these beings.

The portal begins to charge up, we will be able to enter soon.  You can hear the hoots and hollers from the people assembled as they are ready to bring the fight to them before they can bring it to us. The war crys, the chants, the comradery.   The orcs screaming for the horde, the dwarves toasting to past and future victories, the draenei having a look in their eye of worry perhaps about running into themselves as it is quite possible due to their long life spans, the tauren standing in quiet contemplation, the night elves looking like they are meditating but extremely forward focused, everyone preparing in their own way.

When the portal is fully charged we all rush through, all the greatest heroes of Azeroth, the people who lead the world into the age of mortals, to finish the job they should have finished back in the throne room when they should have killed Garrosh instead of letting him face a trial, a trial they had to know he would have never actually make it through to the finish. 

A death at the hands of the heroes of Azeroth would have been too good for him because it would have been a death with honor for an orc, even one with a genocidal streak, because for an orc a death at the hand of their enemy in battle is full of honor and for it to need to be the best of the best, the heroes of azeroth that needed to take him down, it would have been a death of great honor to him, but even if he did not deserve to go out with that sort of honor it was still a death that we should have served, a final blow we should have dished out.  Who is to say something like this would have never happen without him, but one thing is for sure, it would not be happening now if only we had finished the job we had set out to do.

The first great battle in the age or mortals and we failed because we were not able to do what needed to be done and kill.  We showed mercy, we showed we have morals, follow laws, feel no one is past being capable of being redeemed.  We showed our weakness, and now our weakness, proof we are not ready to be in the age or mortals, could end up being our downfall.

While I can not speak for anyone else I know when we brought Garrosh to his knees and beat the old god influence out of him I wanted to place a bolt right between his eyes, leaders be damned.  I bought him down, I lost family when he started to strip mine and conquer ashenvale, I had the right, I wanted vengeance, but I was told by some panda with more morals than brains that I am better than that.  Well guess what.  No I am not. 

I should have killed him when I had the chance, should have had him drawn and quartered, should have fed him in pieces to Fang as a victory meal.  He deserved death even if in death he would have gained great honor in his own eyes as his last thought and the thoughts of those who would still follow him even in death.  It might have created a martyr, it might have spurred people on to finish what he started and to cleanse the world of all non orcs, but at least the problem would have remained on this world, with these people and not have opened a can of beans like it has with an entire world of people coming to attempt to take over ours.

We needed to close this gate and to do so we needed to do it from the other side, just like we had done before in a time that seemed so long ago.  My hippogryph screams a war cry as it hears me do the same when we take off and head into the portal.

Once on the other side I find myself grounded, my hippogryph flaps its wings trying to get airborne but can not, once again it seems its wings have been clipped just as they have been many times before.  Clipped by a new atmosphere, one it has not yet grown accustom to, one it can not yet gain flight in.  I have experienced this before and it was not all that unexpected.  Many times when I go to a new land mass it takes some time for my hippogryph to get used to the weight of the air, or at least that is how that one human scholar explained it to me when I asked him about it some years back.

Usually it takes some times, no more than 24 hours, for my hippogryph to get used to the new area it is in and be able to carry my weight.  I dismount and look it in the eyes and tell it that I am going to go ahead and it can get used to the pressures of the air on this world without my weight on its back first.  Once it learned how to deal with it I shall come back and we can adventure once again.  I give it a treat and let it go on its way.

I always feel so bad when we have to go separate paths because we have developed a close bond my hippogryph and I.  I can see in her eyes that she believes it is a failure of hers why she can not fly, she does not understand the physics of it, that it is not her fault, she just needs to get used to it and all will be fine.  I know that.  Sure I could run around with her as a ground mount but it is not fair to her.  She was born to fly, she was born to be in the air, forcing her, even if she would be glad to do so, to run instead of fly would show a great deal of disrespect for her and I am not about to do that, not to a creature I have become so close to.

For now I have a white polar bear that is in need of a little bit of attention and I guess he is going to get it, at least for the 24 hours or so it will take for my hippogryph to get used to the new land mass we happen to be on.

Shortly after my arrival I learn that the king has made me a commander.  I am not even a commissioned officer of the standard military, but apparently I have been given a parcel of land and told that I am to build a station there with a full selection of people whom will work for me.  I am supposed to build an army and lead it.  Just like the commissions in the wilds when we landed there just in the recent past that put military officers in charge of their own digs, quarries, and barracks, I would now be put in charge of my own.

I was taken aback by this idea, as I said, being I am not part of the military I should not have been given a base and a piece of land all to my own before an officer that had earned the right.  I might carry the tag hero of azeroth because I have been in the middle of what seems like every major battle that has taken place over the last 10 years, but I am still just an adventurer.  There must be someone more qualified to lead a base than I but for some reason, perhaps a shortness of forces on this side of the portal, it seems as if I have been deputized without even being told that is what it was.

I spend the better part of three weeks getting to know the area, building my base, and finding out any information I can on where I can find the largest threats to our world so I can eradicate them before they can bring harm to my world.  All this time I watch as my hippogryph walks around the stables in my garrison occasionally pecking at the ground and then looking up to the skies, the skies it should be flying in.  There is a certain sadness in her eyes, I can see it, I can feel it deep in my very soul when I look at her.  She feels broken, she feels as if she let me down, but I know it is not her.  We have been here for a while, she should have adapted to the air here, she should be able to get into the air with no problem.  It is me, I know it is me.  There is something I have not learned yet, some secret I need to find out, some way for me to teach her how to spread her wings again and sour into the air and feel the wind against her face as she goes screaming through the air.

For some reason I find myself a bit more concerned with my hippogryph at the moment then the orcs.  We have them at bay.  We are on their world, defeating their troops, holding back their efforts, so it is only a matter of time before we find all their chiefs and end this threat.  But my hippogryph should be flying over my garrison, it should not be trapped on the ground in the stables.  It is just not right, not right at all.

The following weeks all bring more heart ache day after day.  I receive a missive that my friends are being attacked by the horde in a neighboring town and instead of being able to get on my mount and get their quickly by air I am forced to ride the long route on the ground.  I end up picking up battles I have no time for, my friends are in danger and need my help and here I am fighting this spider, how useless can you get. 

They are fighting with the horde when they should be fighting the enemy, this always happens, fighting among each other instead of the larger threat and instead of me being there to try and help them, or to try and calm the sides down so we can get back on task, I am fighting some firelisk that took it upon himself to dismount me.  And it happens over and over again and all I can imagine is my friends, the ones that asked for my help, screaming out wondering where I am, why I did not come, if I had ignored them or abandoned them because it took me an hour to get to them instead of the 3 minutes it should have.

I arrive to four broken bodies, they were ambushed by a dozen horde, even if I had been there we probably would have lost, but at least we could have inflicted a few more injuries on their side.  Maybe enough to make them think twice before doing so again.  I help my friends up and tend to their wounds as best I can, I only have basic medic training and can only make simple bandages, but I can provide them with some food as well to get their energy levels back up some so we can make the trek back to the city.  The long trek back to the city that will no doubt see us in battle after battle when all we want to do is get back to the city so we can take a moment to rest.  I might complain about the long journey to help them and getting attacked, stunned, dismounted, nearly every step of the way, but at least I was not the one with cracked armor, a broken sword and a feeling like no one came to help even when I asked for help.

Even if we would have still lost the battle I can't help but think I let my friends down by not being able to get here on time.  I could blame my hippogryph, I could say if only it had learned to fly things would have been different, I would have been there sooner.  But it is not her fault, it is mine, mine for not being able to teach her how to fly in this new world.  Some hero I am, I can not even teach my own hippogryph how to do something it naturally learned at birth.  I am no hero and each day that passes by reminds me of that more.  Each time someone dies I could have saved, each time someone asks for help and I can't get there, each time I need to go somewhere but don't because it will take to long to get there.  Each and every day I am reminded why I am not a hero.  Not even in the slightest.

I am now just a cog in the machine, I am running a garrison, under the leaderships orders, I am a front line solider, I am not a hero any longer and nothing says that more then the day I finally decide to hang up my bow, to give up my unwanted commission, and to stop ever referring to myself as a hero again.

It was all when an orc appeared at my garrison gates, I had my troops pick up arms, but not make an advance, he was alone and he did not seem like a threat, but there was no reason to let the defenses down.  It is better to be prepared than to be dead.

He tells me that his village is under attack and he needs help, they are just a simple farming village and they can not defend themselves, when they refused to give provisions to the iron horde they started to trash the village and just take whatever they could find, and that also means their way with the women. 

He figured if I could take a few of them out and maybe take out the leader they would go away.  He is right, that is usually how it works, take out some of the ranks and the man in charge and they disband, as an adventurer I have seen this scenario a million times it seems.  He said he came to me because he heard I was a hero on my world and thought being I was close I could help him.  I told him I would try by best.

My best was not good enough.  It took me too long to get there.  I managed to kill the leader and many of his troops with little problem and I defended the village from being completely over run but the damage had been done.  Huts had been burnt, fields have been torn up, women and children had been killed and I could see the fresh blood still flowing along the dirt paths of the village.  I chased them away but I was too late.  I see an orc female, barely alive, and run to her to see if I can help but my minimal medical training is nothing that can help with the injuries she has sustained.

She whispers up to me, thank you hero, and then passes away.  I scream as loud as I can.  I am no hero, I did not make it in time.  If I had made it in time you would still be alive.  How could she call me a hero?  Am I a hero because I was willing to save some orcs even if we were here to fight orcs?  No, these were innocent people just trying to live their lives, orc or not, they did not deserve what happened here.  I am not a hero for helping them, I failed them.  Women and children are dead, farms destroyed, huts burnt to the ground, all because it took me too long to get here.  I was too late, too late because I could not even teach a flying beast how to fly.  How exactly does that make me a hero?

I head back to the city and assemble a group.  I know where one of the orc leaders are.  I am going to take him out.  I am not going to show any mercy, we are no longer in the land of pandas and I do not need to listen to their rules or law.  An orc will die at my hands this very day.  The trip back to the city is long and there are many battles along the way, too many for my liking.  I want to get to killing orcs, not tigers and other wild life, this is just annoying, nothing more.  Each step, each time I am stopped, I can't help but think if I could just teach my hippogryph to fly I could get this done instead of wasting time.

After I finally make my way back to the city and get a group together, we head to where my information had lead me to believe one of the orc leaders are hiding out.  It takes us a long time to make our way there, some take taxis to get closer, some try to go on foot, none of us are apparently heroes, real heroes, because none of us have been able to figure out how to teach a flying creature how to fly.

We are enough of warriors, fighters, and adventurers, to deliver a swift blow to the orc leader when we find him.  His death is quick and with no fanfare, no drama and no bells and whistles, just direct vengeance and it felt good but was it good enough to make me feel like a hero again, was it good enough to get the image of that woman that died in my arms just hours earlier because I could not get there in time out of my head.

That evening I went to my barracks and one of my followers said, nice work today sir, you are a hero.  I just looked at him, could not even figure out any words to say, I gave him a halfhearted smile with no real feeling behind it and moved along.

I stopped by my stables and saw my hippogryph, she looked so happy to see me.  I reached into my satchel and pulled out a treat and handed it to her.  She pecked at my hand eating it from there and then did what she always does, she looked up into the sky and I could see that hint of sadness in her heart once again.  I just whispered to her, I know, I know, and then I head off to bed.

I take off my armor and kick my boots off and place my bow on its mount on the wall as I lay back in my bed and look out the window and I feel exactly how my hippogryph must feel not being able to take to the skies.  My friends being alone in battle when I should have been able to make it there, innocent women and children dying because I could not make it there faster, all because I could not take to the sky.  My sadness is just like hers, I can understand it and I am no hero.  Maybe one day when I take to the sky again I might be, but for now, I am just some grunt in the kings army.  No better than anyone else, no one special and most definitely, not a hero.  Heroes fly.

I go to bed thinking maybe tomorrow this nightmare will end and I can get back to being what I once was, a hero of azeroth, instead of just being the keeper of this garrison and a rank soldier, just like everyone else.  How easy you can go from being a hero to a nobody when you can't take to the skies.  Yes, I can feel the sadness in my hippogryphs heart because it is in mine too.

Three Favorite Fights as a Hunter in Mists

Where we stand now knowing we are not going to be getting any more raids it is safe to start making lists on mists.  This list is my personal three favorite fights as a hunter for this expansion.  I was going to make a top five but no matter how much I thought about it I could not come up with five fights I actually liked this expansion from the perspective of a hunter.

I can not just make a blanket three favorite because it changes depending on what class I am playing and what role I am filling.  As #2 on this list will show, while it is on my hunters list of his five favorite fights I doubt any caster would touch this fight as one of their favorites.  All of these are based on normal mode because one I have not experienced in heroic (yet) and it would be unfair to judge them based on that.  Oddly enough all three are from the current tier.

So here goes, my three favorite fights as a hunter in mists.


#3) Immerseus:

I am probably the only person in the entire world that would even consider this for the personal favorite fight of an expansion.  As a matter of fact I believe if we put up a poll this fight would have a solid chance at winning for the worst fight of the entire expansion so why do I like it?

Honestly, I didn't, until I started thinking about my favorite fights.  I always hated this fight, still do, but I love it and I hate it.  When thinking about my favorite fights it occurred to me this fight is a hunter fight just like Thok was (see #2).  It has many burst phases which line up nicely for a hunter which can be a pretty burst heavy class at times and during the first couple of times it just so happens you have everything available for it.  As the fight goes on there always seems to be something you can use on it be it crows or stampede, or what have you.  If you happen to be an engineer the glove boost lines up nicely with it as well.  So there is that fun factor, unlike many other classes that need a build up, hunters can burst on demand.

Then there is the split up phase where there is no class in the game that can handle it the way hunters do.  With ice trap, binding shot, glyphed explosive trap, concussive shot, and you and your pet on different targets you can handle more blobs than any other class and then when you have to start running to go get some more you can do everything on the move.

This fight is another chance for hunters to shine with their tool box in an expansion were it often seemed like hunters were nothing special at all because we bring absolutely zero raid utility.  Most fights it really seemed like hunters with their lack of raid cooldowns were more a liability than they were an asset but on this fight their ability to handle so many things all by themselves really shined.  Lets not forget the fact deterrence can completely soak up all the damage from the healing blobs hitting or the water wall spinning and disengage could be used to get around the platform quickly or get to the wall fast to avoid a knock back from the water wall.

So all that, plus we can continuously do our rotation while on the move which means unlike every other class at range we do not get interrupted by needing to move from those annoying puddles being put under our feet, or having to run from the wall, or chasing down blobs.

So do I like the idea of the fight?  Not really.  But when thinking about it purely from a hunter perspective this fight has hunter fight written all over it and as a hunter it is my third favorite fight in the expansion.  As some might say, me concluding this is my third favorite fight proves I am completely freaking insane.

#2) Thok the Bloodthirsty:

Say what you want about this fight but as a hunter I love it.  I love it in part because we are the only class that can basically completely ignore one of the main mechanics of the fight.  We do not get interrupted so of course that is something to really love.  While everyone else is trying to manage what they can cast and when they can cast it we, as hunters, can just pew pew away as if nothing is happening.

When it comes time to run around everyone needs to watch themselves and mostly melee, if they are not really on the ball, will be no where near mr big teeth.  Casters for the most part can't really go running around after him but once again we, as hunters, can continue with our entire rotation as if nothing is happening because we can do 100% of our abilities while on the move.

Then there is utility and the fact we get to use a great deal of the little tools we have in our over loaded tool box.  The things blizzard calls bloat and I call awesomesause.  Abilities you rarely use are not bloat and can really be a lot of fun when you do get the chance to use them.  We can venom the boss before he eats someone to decrease healing, we can tranquilize the jailer to remove the enrage, and if you are one tanking it if the worst happens and the tank goes down in transition we can cover while they are revived with some swift kiting and a distracting shot.

We get to use our toolbox, ignore mechanics and get to take advantage of our best asset of attacking from range while moving.  What is there not to like about this fight as a hunter?  While it is number two on my list it has to be number one on fights that hunters shine on this expansion.  I'd be hard pressed to think of another fight where hunters had as huge an advantage as they do just for being hunters as this fight.  Say what you want, but it is fun being OP, the only difference is, I admit I like it.

#1) Sha of Pride:

Have you ever had a fight that you do better on that others for some reason and you can not explain it?  Well this is one of those fights for me, but I can explain it.  It is a tank and spank fight basically.  Sure there is an adds phase, there is a target switching phase, there is a stand here to help phase and there are stack up and spread out mechanics involved.  But over all, to me, it is just a basic tank and spank.

The reason for that is that the entire fight is on a perfectly scripted cycle that once you know it means nothing will ever surprise you.  You do what it is you do and keep getting a chance to do it better each time you are there.  There is no randomness involved, except for the gift buff, but even at that the one little random part is nothing compared to every other fight in the expansion where it is random random random and run run run.  This fight is all predictable.

This fight is exactly how fights should be in PvE.  It has a lot of things going on and can be a great tool to teach new players because it has so much involved with it but even with all that it really is a super simple fight once you learn it.  So much so that I can call it a tank and spank fight without even feeling bad about it even if it is not just a stand there and kill fight like a tank and spank is normally thought to be.

This fight is as simple as blow up the boss, pool for the adds, disengage to land on the lit panel, turn to kill add, feel the boom or ignore it with deterrence, stack back up and start all over again.  Sure, that sounds like a few things going on there so it is not exactly a tank and spank by the normal definition but once you have the patten down it sure as hell is.  Very rarely will it throw a curve ball at you.

It is one of those fights were it is consistent which is another reason I love it.  I can compare myself each week to the previous week and see if I am getting better, or if a gear upgrade is working, or if I need to work on timing, movement, what have you.

It is probably the most telegraphed fight in the entire expansion and that is why I like it.  I've always been a fan of order.  I like things to be kept in the right places, it is why I am such a stickler with my bags and what I keep in them.  So a fight that puts everything in the right places so they are easy to find is right up my alley.

I enjoy this fight as a tank, as a healer and as a damage dealer, any type of damage dealer.  While 3 and 2 might be hunter specific, 1 is just 1.  It is the best of the best of all fights this expansion. In my opinion of course.

How Did Week One of the Gaze Treat You?

After a full week of having the so called increased drop rates from the gaze of the black prince I figured I would discuss how it worked for me and you are free to share your experiences as well.

Before I get on to drop rates I do have to say that the increased reputation gains worked out a lot better than I had expected.  Sure there is a lot more competition for mobs but I was able to get two characters that were on that stage to exalted with basically no effort.

In part that was thanks to the fact I did not camp a spot like I normally would with so many people all over the place. and people fighting to camp the so called "best" farm spots for reputation that they had read about online  I just ran around, I killed rares, I used the incantations, all things that give nice reputation.

With all that running around however I managed to stumble across something that I found amazing.  It is amazing because of the world we live in with the internet.  Whenever you find a good spot for something there is always someone else that finds in and instead of keeping it to their close circle of friends they have to play internet hero and tell the world.

Even if I have a blog and all I am not that type of person.  I found a super farm spot at the beginning of the expansion and kept it to myself, and my guild and friends, for a very long time.  It was only recently that someone else found it and I started to see it talked about.  Now, a couple of months later there is usually always someone there to farm it.

Not saying things should not be shared, but sometimes, well, they should not.  Either way, although I will not share it I will give a hint and you can look for it yourself.  This spot has mobs that give 60 reputation each thanks to the buff.  There are only 7 mobs, all very low health, and they respawn fast.  Not just fast but as you are killing the last one the first one respawned.  And they die near instantly because of the low life.

I found my farming spot and even when the buff goes away this will be the spot of choice.  Even my lower geared characters can take advantage of it because of the 300K health pool of the mobs.  Give it time and this space will be ruined too as soon as word gets out, but for now it is great. 

I found it because there were dozens of people around the center fighting for kills I would just run around and kill things until I found this and noticed I can walk over there and there would not be a soul around.  And want even better?  It is off the beaten path which means no one will see you farming them and so no one will try and take mobs from you.  But with as fast as they respawn, it might not be a problem even if they did.  Even without the buff this will still be my new spot of choice.  Even more so if you are a skinner.  (there is your hint, if you find it, keep it close to the vest, we do not want the best farm spot over run)

Now, to how the gaze has worked for me this week.

Over all I am not very impressed with it.  I am not saying I did not experience any luck with it but nothing really worth writing about as odd as that sounds being I am in fact writing about it.

My monk began the week only needing two runestones so even without the buff there was absolutely zero doubt I would get the cloak this week on my monk, and I did of course, so it is really hard to say how much it "helped" me however I would chalk my monk up to being one of the characters it did help even if it did not need any help so to speak. 

I did ToT 3 first, as I do on all my characters because I am still going for the pet in there and managed to snag both runestones during that run so I just went to part 4 right after to get the heart.  I guess I was lucky that I did not need to do all of them for the two guaranteed drops and then have to do ToT 4 again a second time for the heart.  So did the gaze help my monk, I would like to think so, but then again, it could have just been luck.  Call this one a draw.  Didn't really see a boost, but it could have been there, I was going to finish anyway.

For HH1, Horde Hunter 1, I started my secret collection.  I managed to get 11 secrets which just so happens to be the exact number I got on another character the week before, with no buff what so ever.  So this was a wash at best.  Most decent weeks for secrets lately see you at 8 or better thanks to them adding them to the first 8 bosses of SoO.  So without a doubt I would say that the gaze did nothing for my horde hunter.  So lets call this one a loss for the gaze as it did nothing.

For AH3, Alliance Hunter 3, I was sitting at 11 secrets, as I mentioned I got them last week without the buff.  So this week you would figure that I would be all but guaranteed to finish off the secrets part of the quest right?  Don't jump to that conclusion so fast.  I did.  I was all ready to move along to collecting runestones this week after getting 11 without the buff the week before 9 this week with the buff would be a joke. 

Not only did I not advance to runestones this week, I did not even manage to put myself in a position where I can maximize effectiveness next week because I only got 5.  To maximize effect I would need to get the last secrets I need from the first two ToTs so I am not wasting ones that will later drop runestones for me.  But sitting at 16 now means I need to get 4 out of those 6 bosses.  Basically, the gaze screwed me here. 

Not only screwed me but gave me less than I got the week before without it.  I went from expecting to starting runestones and maybe even getting a couple this week to not even finishing secrets and not even being in a good place to finish them before wasting kills on the bosses that could give me runestones later next week.  In this case the gaze is a failure, not only a failure but a failure of legendary proportions.  Ha ha, get it, legendary proportions.

My mage is my one true success case.  It only needed two secrets to move on and it got those in the first two ToTs, thankfully, so I did not need to waste possible stone bosses.  It did not start out looking good for my mage as I needed all 6 of those bosses to get the two stones.  After doing all the things I needed to do I went back in and knocked out the four that could drop stones. 

After an amazing start of 6 stones out of 7 bosses I ended with 8 stones out of the full 14.  Even if the second half of them did not work out as well as the first half of them I still call this one a success story for the gaze.  8 stones in one week is nothing to laugh at.  I think my first time through on my main, when there were fewer bosses that dropped them and there were no guaranteed drops, I probably didn't have my 8th stone until I was on the 3rd month of the quest killing every single boss that could drop them each week.  1 day is much better than 3 months in terms of collecting.  So yes, this was a huge boost for the gaze for me.

My druid was in need of 5 secrets to move on so unless there was a gift of the gods dropped down upon my druid and 5 of the 6 secret only bosses dropped one I would need to cut into possible runestone drops.  That is exactly what happened.  I only got 2 secrets out of the 6 bosses that could have dropped them without eating up runestone chances.   I tanked the first four for my guild before another tank showed up to take over and got the three more I needed from there.  Three out of four secrets on normal is not surprising and impressive.  Normal is believed to have a higher drop rate to begin with and the forth boss is a guaranteed drop. 

So far it is not looking like the gaze had done anything for me on that character.  You could argue that doing the other 11 bosses I could do for stones however did show some luck was involved because I managed to get 5 in those 11 bosses.  But it was not looking good at first.  I was on a bad luck streak only getting 1 in the first 7 bosses but then getting 4 in a row to finish the week.  So did the gaze grant me luck?  I don't think so.  In the end I just had a lucky streak, there was nothing lucky or increased in the secret collection and nothing lucky about the first 7 stone bosses I killed.  I just managed to get on a lucky streak in gates and got one off each boss to give me 5 for the week.  I can not and will not credit the gaze for this.  It was luck, just as all the bosses before it were just me being unlucky.

So how did the gaze buff work for you this week?

Most of my characters saw absolutely no change, it was just either being lucky or unlucky.  I did see one case that could be argued the gaze works in my mage who managed 8 stones in one week and I did see one case that is proof the gaze does not work, AH3 which managed to get fewer secrets with the buff that it did the week before without it.  The rest of my characters just has the same old basic ever week experience.  No noticeable change at all.

So if you ask me, the gaze is a lie.

Just keep plugging along if you want to get the cloak, do not let the gaze convince you to try.  It is bullshit.  In the end you will either be lucky or you won't be lucky, and the gaze will not help you either way.  If you are lucky you might get 1 more piece, if you are unlucky you will still get nothing.  Now if only blizzard could release a buff that increases your luck, that might help.

Monday Random Thoughts

- I had a lot of LFR experience this weekend.

- Mostly decent as surprising as that might sound.

- I had heard a lot of people complaining about the quality of player being in them because of the gaze of the black prince but I did not see any difference that way.

- If anything there might have been a slightly better class of player because of it, not worse.

- As decent players were taking the chance to get some rarely played alts some sigils, secrets or stones.

- Over all from my experiences with multiple characters through the LFR I can safely say the gaze is a lie.

- Or at least that is the way it seems over all.

- Most people were still complaining, some where still suffering horrible luck and some where having a little exceptional luck.

- In the end, the gaze, just like everything else in this game is luck based.

- Nothing more, nothing less.

- You will either get lucky or not get lucky.

- I experienced both cases.

- I ran into many people saying that they experienced both cases as well.

- You are either lucky or you are not.

- One guild member killed all 20 you can kill for secrets and got 17.

- One guild member killed all 20 you can kill for secrets and got 3.

- The gaze is a lie.

- It is still all about being lucky or not being lucky.

- All the gaze buff does is give someone who is on a lucky streak even more.

- It does nothing to help someone that is unlucky.

- I finished off my monk but that was no surprise, it only needed 2 runestones so I knew it would finish the legendary this week no matter what.

- The beauty was that I got both runestones from ToT 3, the one I always run anyway, so it made it easier.

- I went and got the heart and then went and did the challenge.

- I have now completed the legendary challenge in all four roles which is what I set out to do.

- Tank was, without a shadow of a doubt, the easiest of them all.

- And no, I did not over gear it.

- I had saved some of my older gear to make sure I did it at a gear appropriate level.

- I remember doing it on my rogue, which I am not very good at, in a gear appropriate level and thinking it was the most exciting experience this expansion.

- So I made sure to keep my tank set so I could experience the same on my tank.

- Not like it was hard, my monk, even now, is only at a 530 item level.

- Even if I did not drop down to a 518 item level it would have still be gear appropriate at a 530 item level.

- The tank challenge was a joke.

- I did not even look it up, I just went in there and did my thing.

- I failed the first time due to a mouse error.

- My mouse died as I was intercepting the things being thrown at the black price by the elementals.

- As such, the price died.

- I probably could have managed it without the mouse to move but when you are so in the habit off doing something a certain way you get dependent on it.

- So instead of switching to my keyboard to move I kept shaking my mouse hoping it would respond.

- No biggie, the tank trail was still the easiest of them all without a doubt.

- Now I understand what some of the melee were saying on the forms when they said if you are having trouble with the melee one just get a tank spec, do not even need different gear, and do the tank one.

- I absolutely agree with them.

- Even the worst player in the game could manage the tank one with little or no problem.

- I can only imagine it now when my druid goes to do it.

- With a 560 item level and already doing insane tank DPS I will probably kill the guy before the elementals come out.

- Speaking of druid, I finished up the 5 secrets my druid needed to move on.

- Doing that solo scenario was easy at that gear level of course.

- I am going to run some more tonight to start on runestones, maybe, if nothing else pops up.

- One hunter managed to get 11 secrets this week starting the quest out.

- Means I should finish it next week right?

- Don't bet the camp on it.

- My other hunter that was sitting at 11 secrets from getting 11 last week I figured was a shoe in to finish it this week.

- He did not.

- How the hell did I get 11 without the buff one week and not even 9 the next week with it?

- See, the gaze is a lie.

- So that hunter still needs two more.

- Only 7 secrets in 20 bosses when I got 11 from 20 bosses last week without the buff.

- Sorry, just had to repeat that so you can see how insanely unlikely that is to happen.

- See, the gaze is still all about luck, nothing more, nothing less.

- Whatever the behind the scenes number is, lets pretend it is 20% drop rate, it was raised to some other make believe number, lets say 23%.

- So you still need to get lucky to get them.

- On to other characters, my mage.

- He finished the last 2 secrets he needed.

- Needed to run both ToT part 1 and part 2 to manage to get those 2.

- My mage was surely not off to a good start.

- But at least I got the 2 secrets he needed without having to use the ones that drop stones as well.

- I one shot the solo scenario, but at a 539 item level it would be expected having had so much experience with it plus that gear.

- But I have to admit it was the hardest it was for any of my characters on my mage.

- I expected it to be a lot quicker, smoother and faster than any of my other characters because this character is the highest item level character I have ever done that part with (did it before I did it on my druid) and I had all that prior knowledge and experience.

- Oh wow was I wrong.  I almost died twice doing it and actually had to start watching myself.

- I guess I could not just stand in one place and pew pew and let the gear do all the work for me.

- I guess that is a good thing.

- I had to avoid everything because even one more tiny hit and I would have died.

- Big difference from doing it on my druid later which had a higher item level and was a tank.

- On that character I let my item level do the work.

- Well, item level and spec.

- I just stood in everything and destroyed the thing.

- It could not do enough damage to me to out pace the healing a bear is capable of.

- But back to my mage.

- So I started off needing 6 bosses to get two secrets, so I was not exactly expecting much from the stone collection.

- First boss, runestone drops.  Second boss, runestone drops. third boss, nothing. Forth boss, runestone drops.  Fifth boss, runestone drops.  Sixth boss, runestone drops.  Seventh boss, runestone drops.

- Holy crap I am sitting at 6 runestones out of 7 bosses so far.

- 7 more to go, if I keep up this rate I can finish the secrets and runestones on the same week, that is unheard of.

- It also would not happen, this is me you are taking about here.

- I get stuck in an LFR that zones us in waiting on tanks.

- We wait and wait and wait to get tanks and do one boss.  No stone.

- Then we wait and wait and wait to get tanks and do the second boss. No stone.

- Then we wait and wait and wait... and wait some more.

- I am not kidding when I say this, we waited over 2 hours for tanks.

- Just me and a paladin from a heroic guild, in nearly all heroic gear.

- What he was doing there and willing to wait for is beyond me.

- People dropped like flies from the group.

- I got some stuff done around the house while waiting, did some reading online and then when all my chores where done and I read everything I wanted to read I was about to leave.

- I just told the paladin "this is no way for blizzard to treat us making us wait this long, they will fear the wrath of an angry gnome for making us wait here this long".

- You can see my RP shell shining a little there I guess.

- Just as I was about to give up and drop group, not kidding, I had clicked on my name and was moving my mouse pointer to leave group just as the group filled up.

- One second later and I would have been gone.

- So I guess I was lucky?

- If you can call being forced to wait 2 hours lucky.

- No runetone.

- All that wait for no runesone?

- It should have given me one just for waiting, heck, it should have given me all 6 I needed just for waiting.

- Last boss, was SoO 2 I am taking here, I got a runestone.

- Now up to 7 with just one more LFR to go, ToT 3, my favorite.

- No stone, no stone (and no pet and no pet on the roll), and finally a stone to end the week with 8.

- So 8 stones in one week.

- My main did not even have 8 stones after 3 months of doing everything.

- I am happy with that.

- But after that 6 out of 7 start I was expecting more.

- Can't blame me for getting my hopes up.

- I must say I am getting much better on my mage in the last two weeks playing it doing secrets and stones.

- I might have went from 530 to 539 item level, but my output has greatly outpaced my gear increase as I started working on it.

- Depending on fights I am doing between 170K-200K now.

- Makes me sad to see that there are people we bring in on our guilds normal runs that are running around in 560+ gear that can not do that on their mains.

- Most people can not do that.

- And here I am still working on it thinking I am not good enough for flex yet.

- I think I set my own standards too high.

- I see person after person that can not do 170K-200K asking in for a garrosh normal kill when I am doing that and don't even consider myself flex ready yet.

- Am I too hard on myself?

- Either way, nothing wrong with wanting to do the best you can do.

- And I am getting there on my mage.

- Using the rune of power skill and I tell you on some fights, even more so when tanks love to run things all over the place, I am having some issues.

- That damn thing should be an instant.

- I am already wasting a global to cast it, to land lock me on it and give it a cast time is kind of too much.

- I'd like to see it made instant and made to drop at your feet.

- Or at least one of the two, instant and you place it or cast time and at your feet.

- If I had to choose one it would be hard.

- Would love instant but I hate having to place it.

- I am always wasting so much time trying to place to freaking thing.

- Accidentally trying to drop it and clicking a person or an addon or an out of line of sight or some other thing that keeps me from dropping it.

- I did 209 on shaman and second in damage done, behind that fully heroic paladin I mentioned.

- The tanks were running around like chickens with their heads cut off and I was out of range often and kept needing to move and place the freaking thing again.

- Besides the general annoyance of tanks with ants in their pants having to keep wasting casting time placing that thing to only have them move stuff out or range again was horrible.

- I am sure I could have done much better.

- Speaking of doing much better, I had a fun little encounter on one of my hunters that were doing secret collecting.

- I have two on secrets at the moment.

- Yes, two more hunters getting the cloak.

- It was on my 530 hunter, no gems or enchants yet, still in the gearing up process.

- And being I am on a server where gems are in the 500 gold range and metas are in the 2K gold range, I am not going to waste doing it until I get some better gear or get my JC from 70 to 90.

- ToT part 1, trash, this hunter in mostly normal gear and even two heroic pieces starts the recount spam.

- Yes, on trash.

- Number 1, number 1, number 1.

- He was feeling really proud of himself.

- Then we get to the first boss and I put on a clinic.

- Way less gear than him, no gems, no enchants, but understanding how to play the class and the mechanics of the fight, I beat him.

- Not by a little either, I rip him a new one, I beat him by 80K.

- I do not even think he knew what the puddles were for.

- Some mage in the group asks him where his recount spam is now.

- Silence.

- As we are clearing trash, no recount spam this time even if he was in first.

- The mage says, not sharing recount this time.

- Someone else says, he is just embarrassed that he got destroyed by a hunter with crap gear and no gems.

- On horridon he stays on the dino the entire time, I guess to repair his ego.

- He spams recount again.

- Mages says 99% on horridon and you barely beat the other hunter.

- I am loving this.

- It is also making me try harder, because I have to beat him now.

- I am being watched despite being quiet and trying to stay under the radar like I normally do.

- As we see, he is good at cheesing for numbers and AoE and I am good at doing the right thing, council should be a fair fight.

- Or at least as fair as you are going to get between us.

- He can use his AoE cheese and I can do the fight right.

- I beat him again, this time by only 20K but there is no reason in hell I should have beat him, this was hit fight for sure.

- No buff for me to take advantage of and him not, so he should beat me head on.

- He did not spam again but I did get a strange whisper as soon as the bosses go down.

- The mage asked me why I was not gemmed.

- I explained this was an alt and my only max character on the server so I do not want to waste the gold until I had better gear.

- He said, I would help you if you were on my server, you are really good.

- I said thank you and he offered to take me along on a run some day so I could get some gear worth spending the gold on.

- I added him to real ID, maybe some day I will get my horde hunter geared up now.

- It felt nice to have someone notice I was doing good for my gear instead of just looking at my numbers and comparing them to what they can do.

- That is the biggest problem I think most people have.

- Was in a ToT 4 run and on the first boss there someone said, the DPS in this group is horrible.

- I looked at it scrolling all the way down and the 12th best person was sitting at 110K.

- As I recall when it first came out 110K was about the best you would see in there.

- I said in raid, which I rarely do, you must not remember this when it was new and we were happy if even 1 person in the group broke 100K, the DPS is fine.

- People think of things in current terms.

- Just because I you do 200K now with your eyes closed without trying doesn't mean that everyone should be able to do that.

- If they have a 500 item level judge them on how they do with the gear they have, not based on what they should do if they were in current gear.

- They are not in current gear.

- And do not discount the legendary cloak, that could mean upwards of 50K.

- And do not discount the gems and enchants, they can be a huge boost.

- And reforging, the right reforges can be the difference between some fresh lock doing 50K and doing 80K.

- So that guy you just complained about doing 120K at a 520 item level with no legendary, no enchants, no gems and no reforges could easily be doing 200K if he did all that stuff.

- So think for a second when you see him doing 120K in 520 gear like that.

- Could you do 200K at that item level?

- I did not think so, so shut up.

- I did not go into that sort of detail, but I really wanted to teach people like that a lesson.

- Seeing someone do 120K in 520 gear like that means they are doing fantastic, not poorly.

- Even if 120K would be considered poor by current levels.

- Big picture people, see it.

- Over all with all those runs through the LFR on all those characters I did not have many bad experiences.

- The only thing that really left a bad taste in my mount was the waiting time on tanks.

- When I got out, being I had queued for a few at once, it told me I was in queue for 3 hours and 48 minutes.

- That means I was in that one siege for a very long time waiting on tanks.

- Over all I would not agree with people on the forums, at least in my limited experiences.

- The quality of player playing right now thanks to the buff is better than the players I normally see in the LFR.

- Like I said, I think they are better players on alts they left for dead trying to take advantage of the increased drop rate.

- In theory any way.

- Most people in the groups complained that the increased drop rate was a lie.

- Outside of my mage with his luck with runstones, I would have to agree.

- None of my characters saw any more than they normally might.

- Some even saw less than I would have normally expected.

- I am thinking of race changing my horde hunter from a tauren to a troll.

- Not because trolls are awesome, which they are, but because I always feels like I am moving so slow.

- I know all characters move at the same speed, it just feels sluggish.

- And feel makes a difference in how you play.

- I am not comfortable playing on a tauren.

- At least not as a hunter.

- I think I am going to give up on getting the cloak on all the classes.

- I just do not think I can do it with the plate ones.

- On my DK I love blood and while I can do frost even if not that well I do not enjoy it and unholy hold no interest for me.

- On my warrior I am a tank because that is what warriors are supposed to be and fury has never interested me and I have not played arms in forever it seems not to mention I do not feel like making a second set of gear anyway.

- At least my DK can get away with DPSing in his tank gear.

- On my paladin there is the same gear issue as my warrior.  I am a tank and paladin DPS does not interest me at all even if I have tried it many times over the years so that leaves healing and most assuredly I would need another set of gear to do that.

- So being my three plate wearers are tanks and only tanks and I will not tank the LFR I might need to put them on the shelf and forget ever getting the cloak on them.

- Maybe, just maybe, my DK might make it through at some point but that would only be because I can do frost in my tank gear and do okay, even if not good.

- I intend to give gladiator stance on my warrior a look come warlords.

- I love the idea of a DPS spec with a shield and that uses defensive stats as offensive stats.

- No second set of gear.

- I love it.

- I would have two specs on more classes if it were not for the gear issue.

- As it is now, with all the characters I play, it is just a hassle.

- I got my healing set done on my druid because I really wanted to get the cloak on my druid.

- My druid has been one of my main alts since forever.

- It only made sense I get it on my druid.

- And I suck at cat and have no desire to play chicken so it had to be tree.

- All because I refuse to tank the LFR.

- And judging by that long wait I had looking for tanks, seems others do not want to tank either.

- Blizzard needs to find some way to make this situation better and giving a baggie is not the solution.

- I said it once and I said it again so I will say it once more, make all fights 1 tank fights in LFR and the problem will be partly fixed.

- I would queue as a tank if I did not have to attempt to work with another person that has no desire to work with anyone.

- And it seems most tanks have no desire to work with another person.

- Unless I get over my hate to tank the LFR thing my DK, warrior and paladin will never get the cloak.

- And I do not see that happening.

- Speaking of people that do not understand things I had the odd situation of being put as raid leader in that one SoO that took forever to wait for a tank and I started to act like it.

- While waiting on tanks one monk said he had a tank spec and could switch to tank.

- The person looked at his gear and said, you can not tank in PvP gear.

- He said, sure he can and switched to tank spec and proceeded to go in and get destroyed.

- The guy said, I told you that a monk can not tank in PvP gear.

- The monk dropped group, guess he was embarrassed.

- So I had to go into raid leader teacher mode.

- I said, monks and druids can tank just fine in PvP gear.  Leather has no defensive stats by default PvP or PvE gear wise.  What you hear about not being able to tank in PvP gear are warriors and paladins who are losing all that dodge and parry because it isn't on PvP gear.

- He said, you do not know what you are talking about, look how fast he died.

- I said, that was user error, not a gear issue.

- Monks tanks are not like any other tanks.

- Anyone can pick up a druid, warrior, paladin and DK and tank but monks are a horse of a different color.

- If you do not understand the mechanics of monk tanking you will get squished like a bug, and fast.

- Just like what happened to that poor guy.

- Just because you have a tank spec as a monk doesn't mean you are a monk tank.

- Not like I really tanked much this tier, but I did tank all of ToT on my monk, and I can safely say I know the basics even if I was never that good at it and the basics are, they are not your standard tank class.

- Monks are the new DKs.

- Do you remember what DKs were like when they first came out with their new tanking mechanics.

- I used to say I could tell the good DK tanks from the bad ones on the first trash pull.

- If I needed to waste my entire mana bar to keep them up, bad DK tank, if I never worried, good DK tank.

- Not kidding, I remember pugging one DK back in wrath for a raid and he walks in wearing all spell power gems and when asked about it he said, it makes my diseases hit for more.

- I did not even need for him to pull anything to know he was a bad DK tank.

- That is the stage monks are in now as tanks.

- There is good and bad, no in between, just like it used to be with DK tanks.

- Some smoothing with a few expansions and they will even out monks better.

- So guys like that one looking to help the group and switch to tank spec won't die on one pull.

- I admire his offering to help, but feel bad for him it turned out so bad.

- Monks do need some smoothing out on the learning curve.

- Oh, one more monk thing before I go that I thought was funny.

- One run while waiting on tanks people were talking about which classes are easy to play and some guy playing a monk says that monk DPS is the best.

- He said he is only 520 item level and pulling over 200K easy.

- So easy that anyone can do it without even trying all that hard.

- I then thought for a moment, but did not say anything, does he think that no one in the game runs recount except for him?

- And if no one ran recount, which would mean he could get away with lying like that, saying you did 200K wouldn't mean anything to them.

- I looked back on the last fight, 124K.

- Not exactly 200K is it?

- I started to wonder about the first fight and I could swear he was not in the top 10 (which is all I show on mine by default) when the 10th in the first fight was under 80K.

- So he says monks are easy because you can pull 200K without even trying at a 520 item level.

- Then are you doing less than not trying because 120K and 80K are surely less than 200K.

- No one called him out on it, but I really wish someone did.

- I wonder if he really thinks he is doing 200K or if he was lying.

- If he really thinks that I want some of whatever it is he is taking.

- Sure gives you some nice delusions.

- Just don't go to a bar after taking that drug, you might wake up next to big foot.

- But I could swear she looked liked a model last night.

- She did, and then you logged on your monk in 520 gear and did 200K and bragged about it.

- Have a great day.