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.