Monday Random Thoughts

- My druid now officially has a higher item level than my hunter.

- But that has more to do with the fact I could never get my heroic tier pieces on my hunter.

- So I am stuck with 4 670 tier pieces which is really dragging down my item level.

- While item level matters a lot as the stats on gear increase potential, people read too much into it.

- I can't get into a pug for any HFC stuff because I do not have the 690 item level minimum everyone is looking for.

- Wish they would realize that me at 683 with the 4 piece even at a 670 item level will do better than an equally skilled player over 690 without it.

- Tier is that important and it sucks that I could either A) do better with a lower item level and not get groups or B) do worse with a higher item level and get into groups.

- Sometimes I hate item level.

- But at least my tank / healer is over 690.

- But there you go with how easy it is to make misconceptions.

- I am a much better damage dealer on my 683 hunter than I am a tank on my 695 druid.

- My druid does not need to be 690+ to get into groups.

- I had someone begging me to heal heroic HFC for them on my disc priest because they needed a disc priest.

- My disc priest is a 666 item level.   Evil, yes, over the 690 they are looking for, no.

- And they knew that, and they still begged me to come heal for them.

- So healers or tanks do not need a high item level to get into stuff because they are in high demand, but damage dealers do and people mistakenly think the higher the item level the more DPS they do, and that is just flat out false.

- Had someone in guild act surprised when I was talking about my item level.

- I had done a heroic BRF run to try and get their tier pieces.

- Hey, 685 is still better than 670, and I should at least keep trying to get better gear even if it is in an older raid right?

- I won nothing, but did get the achievement on iron maidens for killing all within 10 seconds.

- BTW, we did not kill them all within 10 seconds.

- Within 1 minute, sure, but not 10 seconds.

- I think that achievement is bugged right now.

- But back to the rant, no gear for me of course.

- When I said my item level he said, I did not realize you were that low.

- Thing is, I do well for the item level I have because I choose the "best" pieces for me, not the gear with the highest item level.

-So yes gear matters, but it is not always everything.

- Not when tier bonuses are that huge.

- But I would like to, you know, win some gear once in a blue moon.

- Would make me feel as if I am not spitting into the wind raiding all the time.

- I swear I have lost my desire to raid in part because it does not seem worth it.

- All that work with no reward really is not fun.

- While I do not raid specifically for gear, I farm bosses for that reason, so getting gear matters.

- Otherwise I would kill the boss once and never go back.

- The need to go back to wrath style where you can buy tier gear with valor.

- Make valor drop from raid boss kills and raid boss kills only.

- So that way I can get what won't drop for me and the whiny bitches who complain about welfare gear even if they do not understand what welfare means can't complain.

- I'd be killing raid bosses and having bad luck with gear, but I can then buy the raid gear I have no luck getting with valor.

- Makes both camps happy.

- And helps even out the bad luck factor.

- I would take that over the bonus roll option any day of the week.

- A bonus roll that has yet to award me with one piece of gear I wanted all expansion is kind of useless.

- If there is one thing I have very good luck at, it is having bad luck.

- I own bad luck with gear drops.

- Enough gear griping, now to some questions I have about T2.

- Is it just me or does it seem like there are some missing objective zones there?

- Why isn't the marsh an objective zone?

- It is a big area, there is a lot to kill there, might as well have it be an objective.

- How about the sabermaw zone?

- Sure most people could not do it solo, but it would work as a nice elite objective zone with double rewards like the throne is.

- And there is that area just to the left of the raid instance.

- There has to be what seems like 12 billion orcs there, why is that not an objective zone?

- Ever notice that the bleeding hallow objective mobs drop no apexis crystals.

- I have 6 characters on T2 now and I think I would rather put a needle into my eye than bring another there.

- Really, T2 is about as much fun as walking barefoot over broken glass.

- At least it has been for me so far.

- I managed to get the 150K apexis crystal mount this weekend.

- Seems I was one of, if not the, first to get it on my server.

- After I got it I rode around on it some and got comments like, "It's dreadtalon" and asking if I got that as a drop from him.

- One person even mentioned it in general.

- Of course this all leads me to believe not many had seen it.

- By sunday it seems like a lot more people started getting it.

- I saw a few more people running around on it.

- Why is it that something looks so cool, until you see a bunch of people on it and then it loses its luster?

- I am not running around on it any more.

- No fun being more people have it now but at least I had a couple of days of fun with it when no one else had it.

- For two full days I never saw a single person on it.

- I bought a healer over to T2 and took the advice of a guild mate and used Illiona as a follower and just healed her and let her do the fighting for me.

- Must say it worked wonders.

- For a short time at least.

- They need to give followers a pet like control system, seriously.

- Illiona was fighting a mob, I saw a pat coming, wanted her to move back as not to aggro them and couldn't.

- So now here I am with 4 elite mobs in the throne, me on a healer, and a fight that is bound to take forever.

- I managed it, she is easy enough to heal and she holds aggro better than most tanks in a 5 man can, but it took forever to kill them.

- That is #1 on why bodyguards need pet like controls.

- #2 is because they are stupid on their own.

- I was fighting a golem in the throne, was there because of the setting the signal quest of course, and the rare dog spawned.

- I was going to clear the area a little but someone went all hog wild in there and attacked, so I turned to throw a shot in and then went back to killing the golem.

- Illiona, in all her majestic glory and self sacrificing nature decided that because I turned and hit the dog with a holy fire that she needed to tank that too, even if she didn't.

- I was yelling at my screen, no Illiona no, don't do it.

- She ran all the way from the golem through a pack of imps, three roaming dogs, and to the rare.

- Then others running to it pulling trains of mobs came.

- She, as a tank, and a better one that most 5 man tanks remember, managed to get aggro on everything she pulled, the rare I put one shot in on, and every single add that everyone trailed there.

- I used everything I could spamming shields, heals, pain suppression, but poor poor Illiona bit off way more than she could chew and died a valiant death trying to defend me.

- Or should I say, trying to defend me when I was never in danger to begin with.

- She caused the danger by running to the rare, one I did not ask her to run to.

- If she had just stayed on the golem she would not have died, I would have my rare loot, and I would have had my body guard with me for the remaining three things I needed to get to complete the quest.

- That is #2 why they need pet like controls.

- Just because I hit something else does not mean she should have attacked it.

- She should have stayed on task, like she was supposed to.

- So here I am on a healer, now alone in the throne, needing to complete my quest.

- This is going to be... fun.

- I managed it, with a little strategy and patience.

- I waited for people to run by and aggro mobs so I could run in and click two of them.

- One more left and I knew exactly which one I would go for.

- There is one that is just over that closed in area where if you try to get in you will get teleported out.

- I ran up and pulled the three mobs there, popped power word shield on myself so my cast would not be interrupted, clicked on the signal and then jumped off the side of the mountain and instantly was teleported to the ground.

- Woot woot, nice planning if I do say so myself.

- Did the signal quest basically without a follower.

- The two I got while she was still with me could just be walked up to anyway, so I did not need her with me.

- Need a group of three my ass, just need a bit of planning.

- And the right tools, which in this case was PWS.

- So what to do now with no follower?

- Stalk rares with patterns.

- I did that until I could get Illiona back and then made another mistake which is # 3 on why followers need pet like controls.

- I joined a whale shark group and she got herself one shot.

- Son of a bitch.

- Well, at least I got the pattern and I called it a day on my healer.

- So # 3 why followers need pet like controls, so I could put her on passive or at least take off her taunt.

- I did all the entry stuff on my rogue too, even managed to do the throne daily solo which I must admit I was personally impressed with.

- Did not get many gear tokens for my rogue so it is still crap geared, but I had a lot of fun with it.

- No felblight from skinning so despite everyone saying they get lots from it, I did not.

- I did however managed to get my 10K dingy coins to get my barrel of bandanas toy.

- There are so many mobs to pick pocket there I was loving it just going around and pick pocketing.

- I must have filled my bags completely twice from just doing that.

- Was rather upset when I got the toy however, partly my own fault.

- I thought it said barrel of bananas and it would be a fun goofy monkey type toy.

- But it was bandanas not bananas.

- Who has ever heard of a barrel of bandanas, it is a barrel of bananas, or at least it is supposed to be.

- Clicking on the barrel gives the person a rogue like bandana, all different colors.

- Boring.

- And I pick pocketed 10K coins for this.

- Oh well, one more toy for the toy box at least, and I had fun doing it.

- Fun is the most important thing and I did enjoy it.

- I would run up to people fighting mobs and pick pocket the mobs they were fighting, it was mildly humorous.

- To me at least.

- Oh BTW, I got the pathfinder done.

- Was second in the guild to get it, a filthy human with their reputation buff got it first.

- Either way, goes to show you that it will not take long for anyone really as long as they do the dailies each day.

- I wonder about people sometimes.

- Was in a cave on my druid going up the path pulling mobs.

- A group of three passes me, looked like a mage, a paladin and a hunter.

- When done with my mobs I leap frog them, it is how it works, they are killing those mobs, I go ahead of them and pull a few.

- They then go to leap frog me and one of them says in say, jerk, as they pass me.

- How exactly am I a jerk?

- If you are going to state "claim" to the mobs up this narrow path than I was here first and that makes you the jerk, not me.

- That is how I looked at it in my mind at least.

- When I am done I go to leap frog them again, like I said, this is how it has been done forever in game.

- The hunter sees I am passing them and then runs forward and hits barrage to tag them before me.

- But thanks to me knowing what was coming and some quick faerie fire, tab, faerie fire, tab, faerie fire, action I was able to tag three of them before he did that.

- So once again he says in say, jerk.

- Excuse me?

- Your group was there fighting, I moved passed you and grabbed a few mobs, you are the one that was trying to take them from me, I was not taking them from you, you were busy fighting your own mobs already.

- I did not say it, but I must admit I was getting slightly upset that this guy kept calling me a jerk when in fact he was the one acting like a jerk.

- I wonder if he even realizes that.

- Does fit the model however, whoever talks the most in group content is usually the worst player or person there.  This guy is fitting that description.

- They leap frog past me once more and run and pull the entire next part of the area and then make laughing emotes, at me.

- Really, who is the jerk here?

- I am just quietly going about my day killing mob for a quest never saying a word to anyone.

- When I am done with my mobs I go past them, to see if there is anything else down the end of the road, as I pass them he says jerk once more.

- Final laugh was for me however.

- They made such an effort to pull the rest of the mobs and bring them back near me so they could taunt me that they had pulled the rest of them that they did not see the rare spawn at the end.

- I walked up on it, alone, and proceeded to beat it all by my lonesome.

- They yell as they finish their mobs and start running down, jerk, once more.

- Yeah, this jerk is killing the rare while you are walking away.

- Poetic justice.

- I do wonder about people like that however.

- It is like if I see someone fighting over a node or a click objective for the zone, I do not go by and take it or click it.

- They are fighting for it, it belongs to them.

- In my opinion at least.

- The worst was a paladin I ran into on my rogue while skinning.

- I was killing raptors for skins and this paladin was following me around.

- Standing on top of me so he could skin my kills.

- I politely said, I am a skinner, I am killing these for the skins.

- I understand following someone around that you know is not a skinner and skinning their kills, I do it all the time, but you do not do that to a skinner.

- Did he stop?  Of course not.

- I had pulled a pack and he jumped on it instantly trying to steal the skins, even got one, but as a worgen I am a faster skinner.

- I started pulling one at a time so he could not do that.

- I hate people like that, go kill your own mobs for skins, go skin mobs that a non skinner left behind, but you do not steal skins from another skinner.

- It is just wrong.

- Even more so when you are members of the same faction.

- I can see stealing from the enemy if you are on a PvP server, but that is about it.

- And it is more about killing the enemy than stealing their skin.

- Speaking of PvP, beware of bait traps.

- Groups put up on 98% horde population servers for an alliance group looking for vengeance, terrorfist, dreadtalon or doomroller.

- You zone in to a slaughter.

- Those mobs where never there, the groups for them were never real.

- It is just a horde person on that server making a bait group for free kills on an alliance alt.

- It seems to be happening more and more.

- So if you are alliance and see a group started by someone on mal ganis, for example, do not join it.

- That is a 98% horde server, any alliance group for a rare mob is a bait group looking for kills, nothing more.

- Even if you are looking to PvP for fun, this is not an option, you will be outnumbered 100 to 1 the second you zone in.

- It is a slaughter, not a fight.

- I mentioned my druid passed my hunter in gear, it has also passed it in naval missions.

- I am really thinking I might as well just switch my main to my druid.

- Maybe it could trick the game into starting to give stuff to my hunter.

- Speaking of switching, I think I am going to name change one of my warriors to George.

-Why so you ask?

- The new "of the jungle" title that we are going to get.

- Come on, who does not want to be "George of the jungle".

- I know I will be.

- Got the compass which is nice, it returns you to your shipyard, but the 4 hour cooldown is a lot.

- It is not so much the cooldown that bugs me however, it is the fact it is another item to clutter my bags.

- I understand why they do not want to make everything account wide as toys, but they should have two toy tabs.

- One for account wide toys and one for personal toys.

- So things like the skull of the mad king, the compass, master treasure hunter, etc, stuff you want to hold on you will not take up bag space but also not become account wide.

- I was looking through my bags and there easily has to be 20 things, if not more, like that just cluttering up bag space.

- Every time blizzard does something to free up bag space they just make it worse by giving us more things to clutter up bag space.

- So a personal toy tab would work along side the account wide toy tab.

- Sounds like a solid idea to me at least.

- I am not liking the flow of T2.

- They tried to emulate what made T1 work so well and I think they failed in most cases.

- One being the progressions of difficulty of the mobs.

- One thing I loved about T1 was that the mobs scaled well based on how far you went in.

- From super simple, no over pulls ever cranes, turtles, etc at the beginning, to a tiny bit harder tigers, frog and others later on, and the further you go in the harder the mobs got.

- T2 does not have that feel.

- Everything seems blanket difficulty with a couple of harder areas, the sabermaw and throne areas.

- There are no "easy" areas like there were on T1 where you had the mostly non aggressive animals you could pull one at a time meaning even the worst geared and worst skilled could participate.

- Also walking into T1 most alts were better geared than walking into T2.

- T1 was designed for people to be walking in with lesser gear and then gave out the 496 gear like candy so you could move further.

- T2 is designed for people already in 650 gear and then you need to fight to get more 650 gear.

- Not exactly as well scaled or designed as the T1 if you ask me.

- So it does not seem as balanced.

- Mind you I have not had much trouble.

- Even with my low geared hunter, low geared priest, low geared paladin and low geared rogue I had very little issue outside of the throne, but that is because I know where things are.

- I know how to move, I know how to pull, I know what I can handle.

- Basically, if you go in there just looking to "play" and not thinking about it, T2 is not as user friendly as T1 was.

- Speaking of knowing how to pull, some people are just freaking stupid.

- Sorry, there is no kinder way to say that.

- There is the one orc rare in the camp off the left of the raid entrance, name escapes me at the moment.

- The camp there is always packed.

- Most people either go in there to kill him with their raid group while waiting to go into the raid, which means it is no problem pulling the whole zone really.

- Others try to pull smart or clear the path some before pulling.

- And then there is this mage moron that pulled him from the top of the bridge in a bad position and somehow, I have no clue how, pulled the entire camp, both sides.

- I just happened to be running past on my druid when I saw this army of name plates coming across the bridge.

- I don't think I could even count how many there were.

- I see this mage blink past me, running for dear life.

- I do what a tank does.

- I turn, lock myself in, hit every single cooldown I have, and start to thrash yelling, bring the pain baby.

- In a matter of seconds I have every single mob on me and I drop an artillery strike.

- I follow it by another artillery strike to thin the pack as I hit my second set of cooldowns.

- It mades no difference I did not have the tag for these mobs, I am a tank, my job is to save people and that is exactly what I planned to do.

- When all is said and done the entire bridge is sparkling for me, and as I said, I did not even have most of them tagged.

- Did the mage say thank you?

- Of course not.

- So why do I call him stupid?

- Because earlier in the day I was there on my rogue, I saw that mob up, I moved in and killed two mobs and then pulled him with a throw.

- Notice what I said there, pulled him.

- Not pulled him and a few guards, not pulled him and a bunch of adds, not pulled him and the entire camp, I pulled him and him only.

- If you do not know how to pull, DON'T.

- It really is that simple.

- It is not like it would be hard to have pulled him solo.

- Or maybe him with the two adds that would come with him that my rogue took the time to kill first.

- But there is no reason to pull the whole zone to pull him.

- Only someone really stupid would do that.

- It is amazing how these people even made it to 100.

- How can you make it to 100 and still not know how to pull mobs, how to plan for patting mobs, how to line of sight a mob.

- Shouldn't these things be learned while leveling?

- I learned them when I leveled.

- And no, I was a hunter, not a tank, so don't say that pulling is something only a tank should know.

- Every player of every class should know how to pull correctly.

- Maybe I am just getting even grumpier in my old age.

- Maybe I am asking too much of people, maybe they don't need to know these things.

- But it sure helps.

- Was tanking a mythic dungeon in my druid when I said, I am going to pull these pats back here next.

- The healer said, it will pull the side mobs, I have healed this a few times, you can not just pull them.

- I said, yes I can.

- They said, no, you can't, they are connected.

- I said, trust me.

- Your funeral, they said.

- I poked my bear head out a little and waited for the right moment and at the right distance.

- I hit faerie fire on the melee mob and backpedaled.

- Just the two mobs pulled, we killed them and the healer said they did not think that was possible.

- I said, because every tank you ever had did not know how to pull.

- It is a simple directional pull where only the melee is in range so the caster needs to move up and it is never in range to cast from where it is.

- When it starts casting instantly is how it triggers the other mobs, being it never started casting it never triggered the other mobs.

- See, simple.

- So maybe I am asking too much that people know how to pull, but I know one thing for sure, I love knowing how to pull.

- It makes the game so much easier.

- And surprises healers.

- One thing is for sure, the next time I do something and I say trust me, I have 100% trust from that healer.

- Wow this is a long random thoughts section today, and I am not even half way done with my thoughts.

- Random or otherwise.

- Either way, have a great day.