Monday Random Thoughts

- I actually played a lot this weekend.

- No underlining reasoning to read into that.

- Why I played as actually quite simple.

- I had a new hunter at 100 to play with.

- I think I have really realized something.

- Without valor gear for gearing up alts I have no desire to play them.

- But I still like my hunters.

- I finished off nagrand and finally managed to get to 610 so I could do heroics.

- I had proving ground gold since the day I hit 100, but not the item level.

- Sorry, but if you can manage a proving grounds gold in 580 gear when it only scales down to 610, they really should just disregard the darn item level requirement.

- Either way, once I managed 610 I started my legendary quest line for it.

- Did all 5 dungeons, needless to say, even on a 610 hunter I rocked the place.

- Playing BM to get a feel for it being I know I will have to switch soon.

- I was pulling between 22K-25K on bosses at a 610 item level.

- No, that is not bragging, that is just saying that dungeon bosses die so damn fast when you are doing those numbers so they do not have a chance to fall to more reasonable numbers that reflect what your actual DPS really is.

- I think I understand now why I get these people telling me "I can pull 35K" and then in a raid they are barely scratching the surface of 20K.

- They are probably using their dungeon numbers.

- There is no way in hell my hunter can pull 25K at a 610 item level with no gems and no enchants.

- Not happening, I am just not that good, nor do I think anyone is.

- But on a short fight, that is exactly what my hunter did.

- As far as dungeons goes I had mostly smooth runs, even if I did waste the better part of 6 hours to do 5 dungeons.

- Yes, 6 hours to do five dungeons.

- This is the #1 reason they need to add valor back to the game.

- It gave people the motivation to run dungeons, which in turn made dungeons easier by having better people there, and more importantly, the faster queue times that come with more people doing them.

- I had one group that did not bow down to the uber geared like you sometimes see.

- It was cool to see them kick the guy.

- We zoned in and this priest just started pulling, it was everbloom by the way.

- The tank kept having to scramble to get the mobs the priest pulled and then the priest would run further and pull more.

- Apparently this group works on the same philosophy that I do.

- Your gear does not matter, your numbers do not matter, even people with great gear and great numbers can be bad players.

- So they kicked the 70K DPS priest and we replaced him with a priest damage dealer doing only 6K.

- Yes 6K is dreadful, even for a fresh 100 that faked their way in.

- But the run was a much more enjoyable and pleasant run.

- Bad players come in all shapes and sizes, and the 70K priest was a bad player, glad the group agreed.

- Heck, they started the kick, and he was gone before I ever even got a chance to click yes to the kick.

- So it seems everyone wanted to be done with him.

- Otherwise no real drama in my 5 runs.

- A few good groups, a few slower, but still good, groups, and no other drama.

- I like that, I like the nice quiet life.

- If I can do content and have fun doing it and be completely free of unneeded drama I would be a very happy elf.

- I won something off the last boss in each run.

- Woohoo?

- Oh, you mean you always get something off the last boss.

- In that case, I won nothing.

- Surprise surprise, you do know who you are reading right now right.

- But even if I did not win much I more importantly won enough, with the ring, to get to 615 and thus the LFR item level.

- I ran all the HM LFRs.

- Again, no drama really.

- A few go go go go morons that deserved a slap to the back of the head but that is about it.

- I won a few pieces, but of course with my luck they were the same pieces I had won from the dungeons, so minor upgrades.

- I did manage to get my item level up to 627 with some lucky 610 salvage pieces that replaced really low stuff, a couple of 615 mission pieces and one piece reasonable priced courtesy of he auction house.

- Not enough to get to the BRF ones, so I stopped there.

- I got a total of 22 stones now.

- I thought they said they increased the drop of these things as a catch up mechanic?

- Sorry, I do not see it.

- I have 5 characters past that stage and getting 22 is like a normal week when it first came out.

- 22 is not even a good week when it first came out.

- I remember getting 22 off 4 bosses one week when it first came out.

- So how exactly did they "increase" the drop rate?

- Sorry, I do not see it.

- Then again, it is just my luck right?

- I also did my one random heroic on my new hunter.

- Because I really need the garrison resources.

- I got UBRS which is cool because I had the millhouse quest from my inn.

- We had a group that wanted to do leeroy and they did it well.

- We not only managed to snag leeroy, but we finished the entire dungeon before leeroy came down.

- We had to wait for him after the run was done.

- And it is not like we had "spectacular" numbers blowing things up.

- Just some solid ones.

- Apparently.

- Was a very nice run with 2 new followers, so I was happy.

- I went and tamed gara on my new hunter, figured why the hell, it is beast mastery.

- I read about how long, involved and difficult it was.

- I found it interesting, but not really all that difficult.

- It was more just wasting time running around collecting thing from mobs you could mostly one shot as a level 100.

- The end phase was a little harder.

- But remember, harder does not mean more difficult.

- I attacked one of the spirit things to summon the boss, who summoned instantly, and it took me what felt like a year and a day to down the thing.

- Over 2M health at my item level, this is going to take a while, and it did.

- I was expecting some epic battle with the boss if the trash I needed to clear to summon him had 2M health.

- I was wrong, so very wrong.

- The boss had 600K health and melted like a stick of butter left out on a hot summers day.

- Excuse me blizzard, I think you made a mistake.

- The trash should have had 600K health and the boss 2M health, not the other way around.

- Blizzard and math, they just do not get along.

- One day they need to hire someone that knows what all those strange looking number like things mean, because apparently no one that works there does.

- How did this go live with the trash having more than 3 times the life of the boss?

- It just makes no sense.

- As I said, it was not difficult in any way.

- Just stand in one place and pew pew.

- Worked for both the trash and the boss.

- But hunters should still be happy, we get new skins for our pets every expansion, what class can say they get that type of coolness.

- I'll tell you who, none.

- But I did expect the final fight to be more like the warlock one for green fire and less like a target dummy.

- I had a weird week in game, some good luck and some bad luck.

- We had a dreadful week in heroic.

- Sure we do not raid long, only for 2 hours, but that is usually good for 6 or 7 bosses at least.

- We only managed 3 this week.

- We wiped 6 times on hanz and frans too.

- Do you believe that?

- It was one of those nights were everything that could go wrong went wrong.

- Tank DCed three times.

- The entire raid lagged out once.

- Some stupid mistakes caused another couple of wipes.

- And we wasted more than half our night on one boss that we were one shotting for the last few months.

- I am sure it happens to everyone where you just have one of those nights.

- Our normal night went a little better, but we still suffered a couple if wipes, thanks to me.

- Yes, I own up to my mistakes.

- We did not have a second tank so I was going to tank on my druid.

- Then just as we were about to pull the first boss a tank that is gearing up logged on.

- So I switched to heals, so I can try to get some gear on my druid, as it still needs it.

- Up to 668, so I am almost ready to tank heroic.

- Odd as it might sound, I've been tanking heroic for a long time.

- I guess that is why the call 670 to tank heroic a "suggestion".

- Was funny to say I am almost ready to tank heroics even if I have already done so.

- Back to the story, the other tank came in, I healed, and then on trash to the next boss the DC monster attacked.

- He never came back, so I switch back to tank.

- We one shot flamebender and moved to kromog.

- First pull we wiped because I could not get aggro off the other tank.

- Every time I taunted he would get the boss back almost instantly.

- I've tanked with him before and never had any aggro problems like that.

- Second attempt I compensated and taunted on cooldown to make sure he did not pull it back off of me and we did just fine.

- We ended up wiping at 0%.

- Tough luck wipe, hate those ones.

- 0% just makes me want to cry.

- Seeing a grown bear cry is not a happy moment.

- Then I looked at recount and saw myself doing 8K DPS.

- 8K DPS?

- Even as a tank that is dreadful.

- Oh crap, I never switched back to my tanking gear.

- Well, that explains the aggro issue right there.

- Funny thing is the healers said I was still easy to heal, they never noticed me as being more squishy than normal for a bear.

- Next attempt we down him and moved on of course, but that was a big oops on my part.

- Been a long time since I screwed up that big.

- After the fight when someone was going over the logs and seeing how everyone did I said "I bet I ranked #1 in the world on flamebender tanking in healing gear."

- That got a chuckle.

- At least we one shot it we me in healing gear.

- Guess it goes to prove one thing, or two actually, that tanking is more about using your abilities at the right time as long as you have he natural health for it and that healers can really cover up a lot of mistakes.

- If even one of them said I was squishy I might have noticed sooner.

- But they all said, you seemed fine to me.

- I did mange to win something that was not a ring this week, a helm, so my druid how has a two piece set.

- Woot.

- And there was more druid luck to report.

- I am still using my tanking cloak when healing as I have not managed to snag a healing cloak or even just a straight intellect one.

- So when I finished my highmaul mission, which was only a 655 as I tanked highmaul on my warrior and not my druid, I decided to switch my specialization over to restoration.

- I figured every item in my tanking set, outside of legs, does not need a 655 and at least I might get something for my healing set this way.

- And even if I got legs, it would still be an upgrade to both as those switch stats.

- I got the healing cloak.

- How awesome is that?

- Want more, it had a gem slot too.

- Want even more, it was warforged too.

- I hit the trifecta in that cache.

- Not only did I get a piece I needed but it was warforged with a gem slot.

- Could not ask for more really.

- Funny how winning something you actually need, even if the item level is way below what you are currently doing, is great just because you actually needed it.

- Blizzard needs to not be such tightwads with gear like that.

- Still no weapon for my hunter and how long has this expansion been out?

- Sorry, it should not be that hard to get gear.

- It ruins the fun when you start feeling like "I am doing this for nothing".

- There always needs to be a feeling like you are getting some return on your time investment.

- And this expansion isn't really feeling it.

- Unless you are talking gold.

- I check my gold Friday night before I logged off.

- I checked it again Sunday night before I logged off.

- 22K gold made this weekend.

- I did not do any soloing, I did not do any auction house work, I did not even cycle through all my characters like a mad man, I just did garrison missions on the character I happened to be playing on at the moment.

- I guess if you consider gold a good return for your time investment, this expansion rocks.

- But if gold was always easy to get for you, it is a little lackluster.

- At least from my perspective.

- But at least I am having fun gearing up another hunter.

- At least to LFR level.

- Wish I could go further, but without valor gear, that is where it ends for alts.

- Not going to spend gold gearing alts, that does not work for me, even if it could be done that way.

- An alt is an alt and I do not invest anything other things time playing them into them, unless I have to.

- I miss actually enjoying playing other classes.

- I liked cycling through them and doing stuff to earn valor and buying them a piece of gear here and there.

- Now without a reasonable way to gear them up to raid ready I don't.

- Not even in the slightest.

- This expansion should be retitled, "death of the alts".

- Hopefully next expansion is called, "sorry about that, we fired the guy that came up with warlords gearing".

- Have a great day.