Monday Random Thoughts

- I have two more level 100 characters.

- First was ranged DPS, second melee DPS, third tank and forth healer.

- I can stop here if I wanted to.

- I won't.

- But there is no rush on anything else really.

- I can fill each role now and that is always my intention.

- I actually could have stopped at three being my druid can tank and heal.

- My druid was third to hit 100.

- I was 610 item level the second I hit 100 which is pretty nice.

- Went into proving grounds and had a little issue being druid self heals and defensive cooldowns seem quite lacking and the healer it gives you as a tank, in a word, sucks.

- Stop DPSing you moron, heal me once in a blue moon.

- After failing twice because I was not aggressively using cooldowns I changed my tactic to play as if I was with a completely worthless healer and it worked.

- I guess that is because I was with a completely worthless healer.

- I thought maybe it was just the healer in the proving grounds that made me feel like a sponge just sucking up the damage but once I did a dungeon, with a pocket healer for honest feedback, it turns out that is all druids are.

- He said he has healed many druids so far and that they are, by far, the hardest class to heal.

- Glad it is not just me.

- So maybe it was not the proving grounds healer.

- Bears just take insane damage.

- And what happened to my FR?

- I used to be able to heal myself for a respectable amount, now I could use a bandage from two expansions ago and probably gain more health than FR gives me.

- Maybe I need to level another tank because druid tanks, even more so in the first tier while healers are still gearing up, are not going to cut it.

- They can of course, but they feel weak.

- My first heroic dungeon, grimrail depot of course.

- One shot the second boss, but it was a guild group so can not say much about that.

- I still say that is the hardest boss of all the dungeons.

- But would you believe I actually one shot it this weekend with a pug once too.

- Amazing, right?

- The forth character I leveled to 100 was my shaman.

- Leveled as DPS of course and boy on boy are shaman squishy even if they wear mail.

- They need to be able to take a hit better, seriously.

- I was blowing things up and doing great numbers, better than my hunter did while leveling, but if a mob touched me a crumbled instantly into a ball and died.

- After a few levels of sneeze and I die I ditched my offhand and crafted myself a 630 shield, because you can equip them at 91, and it was smooth sailing from that point on.

- Amazing how much difference a strong shield can make.

- Sure I would still go down pretty fast if I did not behave myself, but now I was able to take two or three hits before I was in fear for my life instead of just one.

- As soon as I put on that shield I was an unstoppable killing machine.

- Sadly, unlike my druid that was 610 the second they hit 100 by shaman was only 606, but it is close.

- My rogue is still exactly where he was when he hit 100, 604.

- He was leveled to skin, I am in no rush to gear him, or even play him.

- But I decided to try the proving grounds on my rogue after hearing someone in guild complaining they can not get silver on their rogue.

- I suck at my rogue, we all know that.

- So I was afraid to even try thinking I would fail.

- If someone who is a main rogue and has been for many many years can not get silver, what am I going to do.

- I figured I know what their problem is.

- The AoE packs.

- Rogue has dreadful AoE.

- I blew through gold as soon as hit 100 on my hunter, never even close to in danger or missing it and never even needing to think of it.

- I was 25 item levels lower than the lowest it scale when I got gold on my hunter.

- So I figured proving grounds was a complete joke.

- Hearing multiple people say that it was impossible had me thinking about it.

- Maybe it was just so easy because a hunter is my main and I have been playing so long.

- Maybe it is actually harder than I made it out to be.

- Enter the rogue.

- Bronze was easy enough.

- Silver came and the only thing I was worried about was the AoE packs.

- I think it was round 6 when I found myself in a bit of trouble, a mistake on my own part made it a lot closer than I wanted it to be.

- I only had 5 seconds left at the end of that round.

- Now I was starting to worry, maybe those people were right, maybe it is harder than I was giving it credit for.

- Nah, it is really that easy.

- The only reason it was that close was because I made a mistake myself.

- Last round I made a mistake, two actually.

- Managed to get myself frozen in amber, not once but twice.

- Noob right?

- I am still kicking myself over that.

- I hate making stupid mistakes like that, even more so when I walked right into the damn thing.

- All this with the healer still up.

- So 12 seconds lost, all mobs still at full health, looking at that timer dwindling down.

- It starts to do the flashing thing with 3 mobs still up.

- I down all three with 3 seconds left still.

- Silver done, first try, are you kidding me.

- What exactly was hard about this?

- The only time I ever came close to missing the timer were the times I completely screwed up.

- The only difficulty in this was me overcoming my own stupidity.

- Everything was correctable error so even if I had failed I would go in the next time and not make the same mistake.

- Someone in guild said, "As much as you say you are bad on your rogue you are still a lot better than you give yourself credit for, I knew you would get silver."

- Maybe he is right.

- So when I hit 100 on my shaman I figured I would try it on my shaman.

- I've never done the DPS trail on my shaman because my shaman has not been a damage dealer since wrath really.

- And now I am not even enhancement, I am elemental for the sake of saving me having to collect another set of gear for a role I never play in raid anyway.

- I was able to quest in my healing gear as elemental and that was all that mattered to me.

- So I was in a spec of convenience, not one I actually ever really played or practiced on.

- This would be a much better test, would it not?

- Went into the proving grounds as soon as I hit 100 and laughed my way to silver.

- Seriously, not kidding.

- I was talking on voice chat and not even really paying attention to it at all.

- Sure, the caster movement stuff was annoying, I really want the ability to cast on the move back, but other than that my shaman never even came close to missing any round.

- On this character the AoE rounds were the easiest.

- A shaman can make quick work of AoE packs.

- I think I had over 20 seconds between waves more than a couple of times.

- Nope, I did not misjudge it, proving grounds is a complete and total joke.

- So why are there so many people having problems with it?

- And then it came to me.

- Damage dealer proving grounds is not about doing damage.

- People are not failing because they can not put out the damage needed.

- I asked a few guild mates that have been trying for hours each day and still failing where they were having their problem.

- Then all the pieces came together like a puzzle in my mind.

- Blizzard, you sneaky bastards.

- The damage dealer proving grounds was never about DPS, it was about situational awareness.

- I didn't get silver so easily on my rogue and shaman because I was "good" at them.

- I got silver so easily because I already knew what to do.

- That is why it was easy for them.

- I knew where to stand, who to target first, what to interrupt, how to switch targets, how to use where I stand to my advantage.

- All the little things anyone that ever raided takes for granted.

- All those people I talked to, the ones that have been trying for days, even weeks, to get silver and keep failing are the people that were never a part of my raid team.

- Part of the reason they were never a part of my raid team is they have horrible situational awareness.

- They die to stupid all the time.

- They can not handle multiple tacks like doing damage and interrupting.

- They were always standing in the wrong place, not switching targets as needed, not doing all the little things.

- See, that is why it was easy on my rogue and shaman.

- I already knew what to do and the proving ground was never about being a DPS race so the fact I do less DPS on them meant nothing.

- And as my rogue proved, there is even room for error and you can still succeed at it.

- As long as you know what to do mechanics wise, as long as you can multitask, as long as you knew where to stand.

- Now, the question is this, do I tell these people that are having problems how to beat the rounds they are having problems with or do I let them figure it out on their own so they can learn?

- It is an interesting question.

- If I tell them how to do it they can get it done and never need to worry about it.

- If I don't tell them, they might actually get better.

- And maybe some day they might be more than back up to the back ups when it comes to raiding.

- Because maybe they will actually learn something from the proving grounds.

- Sneaky blizzard, sneaky.

- Make a damage dealing proving ground not about doing damage and teaching them how to actually play better.

- I approve.

- Can't believe it took me that long to actually realize that.

- I am usually better at picking up on stuff like that.

- Still think the DPS portion of it could still be stepped up a bit however.

- But I understand why it isn't.

- Someone in guild asked when we would start raiding.

- I said, when the raid comes out next week. (meaning tomorrow)

- Someone else asked, can I come?

- How I dread people asking that.

- After so many months of SoO where we would take anyone that wanted to come along it is going to be hard to tell these people no without feeling like I am insulting them.

- The person that asked that first, and there were a few, was not even a high enough item level to get into a heroic dungeon yet and had no proving grounds silver.

- How do you even have the balls to ask to come to a raid on opening day for the raid when you can not even get into a dungeon?

- Seriously, how do you even consider to ask that?

- I said, as polite as I could, "try getting into some dungeons and gearing up first, raids are higher than dungeons, start there."

- Do people really think they can just show up and get a raid spot?

- I do not care how desperate I am for people I am not going to take someone like that.

- My theory is if you have to ask "can I come" you are probably not ready to raid.

- Someone that is ready to raid knows they are are ready to raid.

- Someone who is ready for day one raiding would say they are ready to raid and hope they get an invite, not ask if they can come.

- Speaking of ready to raid, did you get the ready to raid achievement in skyreach yet?

- When you do it gives you a buff that makes you dance for 1 hour.

- Don't know why but I found that really funny.

- Actually I wonder why there is an achievement for doing the fight the right way.

- Anyone can do it if they do it right, what type of achievement is that?

- The funniest achievement, in that do it right concept, is the one from the last boss in everbloom.

- Step on all the flowers, break out your helpers, get an achievement.

- More to it than that of course, but that is the idea.

- So it is one of those, do the fight right the way it was intended to be done and get the achievement.

- It should be the other way around.

- Something like finish the fight with all helpers dead after allowing all flowers to spawn.

- Now that would be an achievement.

- It would be hard, very hard and maybe near impossible at this current gear level, but that would be a real achievement.

- Doing the fight as it was intended to be done isn't really an achievement.

- I wish they would name one of those silly achievements [You're Doing It Right] - Follow the mechanics of the fight and do it the way it was intended to be done.

- Speaking of achievements, need one more daily for my inn to get the achievement so I can buy the level three inn.

- Have it in my quest log, but when I queue directly for it and see a 50 minute wait I give up instantly.

- Sorry, I refuse to wait 50 minutes for what could very well end up being a wipe fest.

- They need to add better rewards to the random dungeon finder if they want people to continue doing them.

- But the bags at the end with gold are helpful.

- Not just for gold, but for the achievement to get the storehouse level 3 pattern opened.

- You need to loot 10,000 on draenor.

- Was reading on the forums people crying about this saying it would be impossible.

- Someone said it would take them 4 years to get that much.

- I have to wonder, what the hell they do with their time online?

- I am already over 7,500 looted on draenor and still have 16 more 90s to level to 100.

- Seriously, you loot a lot of gold while leveling and those dungeon bags count toward it, the dungeon bosses count for it, the LFR boss bags will surely count for it, the profession bags like the one from jewelcrafting count for it, the quests bags from the inn count toward it, the loot all around the world you pick up count for it.

- I could go on and on.

- I leveled only 4 characters so far, made no efforts to farm gold for the achievement and I am 3/4 of the way there.

- If it takes someone 4 years to get this achievement they are just standing in their garrison doing nothing.

- Do something, loot that something, get achievement.

- If you really are a home body and do not plan on going out or doing anything like dungeons I'll give you the quickest way to get there being super lazy.

- Build a gem boutique, upgrade it to level 2, put a worker in there, do the daily.

- With an average of 200 gold per bag from the daily just doing that and that alone and nothing else you will get the 10,000 looted in less than 2 months.

- And you never need to leave your garrison.

- The materials needed are all there too.

- So please, people, stop complaining that this achievement will be impossible.

- I'd be willing to bet there are thousands with it already and I know in another week I will probably be there too at the rate I am going.

- I love to complain, but I would like to think I complain for a reason.

- Complaining that you need to play the game to get an achievement in game as simple as looting gold is going way to far.

- Not even I would complain about that.

- Now if it were loot 1,000,000 gold, I would join you, because that would be insane.

- I am not sure what is more amazing, people selling pets that are guaranteed drops for 10K on the auction house or people buying them.

- It is a guaranteed drop, everyone gets one, I never even considered selling it.

- Maybe I am jealous because I did not realize how a fool and their money will soon be parted so I never took advantage of the uninformed.

- I should have known better.

- But I wonder how that person that paid 10K for it will feel when they are out questing, see a rare, kill it, and it drops the pet.

- I can picture nelson from the simpsons pointing at them saying "ha ha".

- It is like the ore selling for 10K a stack those first few days.  Now people are selling them 200G a stack or less on my server.

- Most people I know are already saying screw the mine and not doing it every day any more.

- Wow, how that dried up fast.

- I've seen markets crash before and I knew this market would crash because I was on beta and saw it happen there already, but from 10K to 200G nearly over night is really insane.

- I see people trying to sell the garn mount in trade all the time.

- They were asking like 50K or more at first.

- Dude, it is a 100% drop, sure only one person gets it each kill, but it is 100%.

- In a few months when we are all in heroic raid gear we can go smack down the thing for fun and get one for everyone in a small group.

- It is not even worth 5K.

- Just because you got it early does not change the idea of it.

- It is a 1K mount at most and that is only to save me the trip to frostfire.

- I ran into Nak in nagrand yesterday.

- Got me a new clefhoof mount.

- That thing is insanely huge.

- If you like big mounts or are a troll that loves standing on mailboxes and quest givers, this is the mount for you.

- It is a 100% chance to drop to, for everyone that tagged it.

- There are lots of 100% drop chance mounts.

- This one is bound however and everyone gets one, so no need to ever kill it again.

- Was killing some things for goblin reputation pieces on my hunter when someone ran up to me and whispered, why did you not call it out.

- I said, call what out?

- They said, the rare.

- I said, because it will be dead before anyone can get here, why would I waste their time like that making them run here for nothing.

- I understand their reasoning, but I am just running around and if I see a rare, I kill it.

- I do not want to call it out and then wait for 15 minutes for everyone to get there.

- I will kill it and move along with what I am doing.

- The best I will do is say, "killing direhorn now" or something like that, but I am not going to call out and wait.

- Does that make me selfish?

- Maybe it does.

- I just fail to see why I should put my game time on hold to let someone from all the way across the zone get here to put a hit in on something that will respawn in 40 minutes anyway.

- I would call out something like Nak, the rare spawn that drops a highly sought after mount, sure, but not for something like direhorn.

- I will not now, or ever, call out some random regular spawning mob on any character that can easily solo it and then wait for everyone to get there.

- Call me selfish if you must.

- But as the saying goes, time is money friend, and each second I wait for people to get there, another rare could get killed that I miss out on.

- Nope, not going to miss out on effective game play time so someone can run from the other side of the map to put in one hit and then do nothing, effectively making the fight longer for me.

- That really is getting old too.

- People coming in, throwing in a few shots, and then going away to kill other stuff.

- If you put in a shot, do your fair share.

- But my biggest pet peeve right now with them are the adds people bring with them.

- Two things, one, don't pull adds, two, if you do pull adds, they are your adds, you kill them.

- I am tempted to make a macro that says that when people come diving in with 30 things in tow.

- Your adds, you kill them.

- A guild mate did the same thing pulling one of those level 100 elite clefhooves into a rare I was killing.

- Told him to get his hit in and then clean up his mess.

- It is amazing how so many people bring a pack of adds in, all tagged of course, and expect everyone else to deal with them.

- I don't know about you, but after so many years of playing, I have a fair sense of aggro ranges and unless I am caught somewhere, I can navigate around without pulling stuff most of the time.

- I thought everyone that played this game eventually picked up on aggro ranges.

- Like it was something you just learned without even trying to learn as you played.

- But then again, some people are just... blonde.

- That is the best way to put it.

- I actually found someone pulling mobs into a group, on purpose.

- This was no accidentally not paying attention to where they are running type of pull.

- Doing the daily a few guild mates and I were chain pulling and making a huge pack we were AoEing.

- There was this one shaman that kept tagging stuff and dragging it into the pack so we could kill it.

- Smart move in a way, get someone else to do your work, but still a jerk move.

- Kicker is that it was another alliance person.

- Dude, ask and you can join our group.

- We don't bite.

- Well, except for the one worgen, can't vouch for him.

- It would be faster than doing it the way you are doing it and you would not get the reputation of being lame like you are now from doing something like that.

- Need to find a cool farming sport of council reputation.

- Done with the goblins and will be done with the birds soon.

- Considered joining one of the reputation farm groups in group finder but I take a little pride in doing stuff like that on my own.

- Occasionally I will bring along one or two people that want to tag along, but I like doing the work myself.

- Using a random farm group, while smart and effective, feels sort of like cheating to me.

- Maybe if I get bored or frustrated or want the rep on an alt I would cheat just to get it done but at the moment I am enjoying the grind.

- I dig that stuff.

- I only do the grind on one character however.

- I never was one to max reputation with grinds on multiple characters.

- If it were something simple like dailies or dungeon grinding I would, but mob grinding, that is for my main only.

- Helps that it is also, in my opinion, easiest to do that stuff on a hunter.

- Finished off all the stables quests and wondering if I want to keep it for the 20% mounted speed boost now.

- While leveling it I liked it because the mount training dailies gave garrison resources but now that they are all trained I am wondering what to do with it.

- I have all the achievements, love that armored frostwolf, really fits me, so no need to keep it otherwise.

- Still have not built a mage tower on any of my characters.

- Will need to if I want to get the achievement, and I do.

- How have garrison invasions been for you lately?

- Not seeing as many pop as I think I should.

- So many in my guild do their daily, well, daily, and still do not get it.

- I had one early this week, got a second one last night after 3 hours of grinding for bird rep.

- Now, at this stage, it is no big deal because I am there grinding for something, but once I have all the reputations I am not going to grind for three hours to trigger a weekly I should have anyway to begin with.

- Blizzard needs to fix that.

- Oh, and someone that was with me for most of those three hours, he did not get one.

- Only me.

- So it is not even sure that three hours grinding with get it.

- That is out of line for a weekly blizzard, really really out of line.

- In case you did not know, you can get gear from a silver box.

- One of my guild mates got one out of a silver box this week.

- And yes I am 100% certain of that.

- It was the first one he ever did and he only got silver, he has never done a gold, and he showed all us the 645 piece that dropped from his silver box.

- I guess it is just a rare drop in silver, but it is there.

- I got a follower mission for a piece of gear from highmaul.

- Of course I was excited about that.

- Was hoping for a sweet piece of gear with lots of stats on it.

- A chest, legs, you know, something major.

- I said, I think I would be happy with anything other than a ring or neck.

- I got a neck.

- It was a hard fought battle too.

- Needed all level 100 followers, of course, able to counter 6 different abilities and with a item level of 645+ each.

- I had exactly what was needed, not perfect but close enough with high item levels and 5 of the 6 things countered.

- Still exciting to get it finished, but a neck.

- A neck?

- How depressing can you get to finish a huge mission like that and get a neck.

- What to make it worse?

- I have to do some stat work to look into because my new 655 neck might not be an upgrade over my 636 heroic warforged one with a gem slot.

- The 636 one, outside of having a gem slot which is huge has my two best stats and the 655 only has one.

- I did not look into it too much yet but the +35 gem might be more than worth the item level upgrade a 655 would give me.

- Back to the day when item choice is more important than item level.

- Got a pair of 630 gloves with a gem slot yesterday in a random.

- I am wearing a pair of 636 gloves with the speed tertiary stat on them.

- The 630 gloves are better itemization and a gem slot.

- Basically, the 630 piece is better than the 636 piece.

- So once again item choice is more important than item level.

- This is going to be a very interesting expansion in terms of gearing.

- And the best item level is not going to mean the best geared.

- Did a run with a guild hunter and I was putting out 4K DPS more than him.

- He is currently 7 item levels higher than me.

- Asked how the hell was I putting out so much with a lesser weapon and a lesser item level.

- I explained it simply as "I have 4 gem slots, you have none, that is surely part of it".

- Yes folks, it really matters that much.

- I am hating MM however with these long cast time.

- But I do like it, it is nice to play the spec again, just those cast times are ouch.

- I am running with 3% haste and it makes me want to cry.

- When aimed shot gets to around 1.7 or 1.8 seconds, if it can ever get there normally, I think the rotation might feel more comfortable.

- My hunter is currently broken however and I hope blizzard fixes it soon.

- Every time I zone in somewhere I have to call my pet and then dismiss it before stampede will work.

- I am currently running with stampede in dungeons because bosses are usually 2 minutes or so and stampede is better for the burst on really short fights.

- Opinion only mind you, I am sure some theory crafter would be upset if I said that was a fact.

- But I like it better on short fights, that is a fact.

- I also found another bug that I am sure world first guild hunters are going to be abusing the hell out of.

- I can have a pet out and keep the +30% damage buff of lone wolf.

- So that means a fair bit of extra damage for me.

- And no way in hell am I using that in dungeons.

- The last thing I need is someone seeing that and word getting out.

- Or reporting me and my getting banned because of it.

- I am not using it for anything that would be considered abusing it.

- But I do use it while in a guild group or out soloing.

- All it does it kill what I can easily kill anyway a few seconds faster.

- Big deal right?

- It is an easy bug to stumble across, I found it by accident trying to "fix" my stampede so it would work.

- So I am sure top hunters have found it as well.

- I expect a fix on that one soon.

- It is more than a little OP to get the wolf buff and a pet.

- But also awesome for soloing.

- Get the lone wolf buff of +30% damage and the pets buff and the applied buff and the passive buff you already put on yourself.

- Yeah, pretty sweet right, I thought so too.

- I will not get too attached to that one.

- Hope you are all enjoying warlords so far, I know I have been.

- Here is to hoping your highmaul mission, should you get one, does not contain a darn neck.

- Have a great day all.