Monday, July 28, 2014

Monday Random Thoughts

- After taking off a couple of weeks from the LFR I decided to take advantage of the end of the buff and do a few with one of my characters.

- Don't worry this will not be a complete MRT about LFR, just a little bit at the start.

- I think people hate hearing about it as much as they hate doing it.

- But its my party and I'll cry if I want to.

- Works out that I hit a bout of LFR burnout at the wrong time, while the buff was active.

- I have a lot of characters that could have taken advantage of it but oh well.

- Ever have a tank be the person that is actively trying to wipe your group?

- I had a run like that.

- Zoned into the last boss of ToT 4 and the boss was pulled instantly by the tank.

- We wiped.

- Now I did not know what was going on but it was basically because we only had one tank.

- Figured I was new to the group so I can not really make any judgements.

- Second time he pulls, the other tank drops as he pulls, so it is only him.

- He tanks the boss in the center of the room.

- People yell, to the pillar.

- This goes on for a while until we die.

- Tank blames the noobs in the group for sucking.

- Someone points out we did not have a second tank.

- Someone points out he tanked the boss in the middle.

- Someone points out he was dying fast because of poor gear and even worse skills.

- He says, all you people are noobs.

- Remember the comment I always say?

- The worst players in your LFR are usually the most vocal.

- Even that one guy doing 800K DPS that keeps talking shit.

- Yes, he too is one of the worse players.

- Being bad is not all about playing bad.

- You can play good and still be a bad player.

- Either way, we wiped 3 more times before we finally got it down.

- Surprisingly, or more like not surprisingly, enough on the first pull we had with 2 tanks and him not being one of them.

- I was going to say screw it, now I remember why I took a 2 week break, and stopped doing them.

- But another LFR popped up and I said I'll give it one more shot.

- Get a group that has 13 people from the same guild.

- None are exceptional players, not even doing "good" by LFR standards, but they are all doing the right thing.

- We blow through the LFR even with lower numbers in what was one of the smoothest runs I have ever had.

- Even if not one of the fastest.

- Goes to show you that you do not need big numbers, you just need people working together as a team.

- I love seeing a guild group like that in an LFR.

- Most of the time, unless they are from the KT server, they are decent people just looking for a fast and easy run as a group.

- And having a group that works together like that really does make the whole run easier.

- It restored my faith that not every LFR is a nightmare.

- Thanks people from that guild.

- Wish I remember the server so I could give you a shout out.

- Thanks to you I went in to the week needing 13 secrets on my lock and leave the week having them all.

- Next step runestones.

- At the pace I play my lock and if they give us the buff another time or not, it could be months before I finish it, but it was nice to see such a huge amount collected in one week.

- Was not looking good at first.

- Did the first 14 bosses and got 8.

- Which means I needed to get 5 from the last 6.

- Odds seem unlikely.

- I got 5 in a row.

- If I really wanted I could have dropped group and then came back for the 1 boss for a chance at a runestone later.

- But I was not feeling that brave.

- I had some decent runs after that starting nightmare thankfully.

- I also have something amazing to report.

- I did a forgotten depths and you know that trash to Meg?

- No one pulled any of it.  Not even one single mobs.

- They did not even kill everything or extra stuff.

- They killed the absolute minimum you needed to kill and everyone walked by it without pulling anyhthing.

- People waited when they saw something walk close until they can walk past it without pulling.

- WHAT???

- No, stop calling me a liar.

- I am telling the truth, it was actually the first time I was ever there were no one pulled anything.

- It brought a tear to my eye.

- I finally finished the brawlers guild achievements.

- I did all the fights a long time ago.

- I got all the small achievements a very long time ago, when it first came out.

- I collected all the cards.

- But I never killed any of the cards.

- That was the only achievement I needed to finish off.

- At my current gear level of 573 on that hunter it was kind of sad how easy it was.

- But honestly I do not mind at all.

- Nothing wrong with some mindless killing from time to time.

- I like that you can over gear most of the bosses there.

- That is good design that allows everyone to do it.

- Sooner or later that is.

- I did die to mingus diggs however.

- I had not looked up any of the fights, I just went at it doing what a hunter does, so I made a mistake on that one and paid for it.

- I looked it up after I died and then did it no problem.

- Now I am happy, I have them all done before they take all of them away.

- Makes me wonder, why did I want to finish achievements I would not even have in a few months?

- Because that is who I am.

- And that is great content design.

- Achievements give you something to do when you are bored.

- It is like a suggestion, hey why don't you go do this.

- The quests from the cards all gave valor.

- That was nice even if I do not need the valor at the moment.

- They also all give a shirt.

- WTF am I going to do with 12 more shirts when I already have no freaking bag space?

- And they all give a winners satchel.

- I got from 500 - 900 gold in each.

- Awesome.

- I wish these things were weekly quests.

- I would go there and kill all of them every single week.

- Makes me wonder.

- I think I have an extra of bear and the fair in my bank.

- I will have to see if I can turn it in now that I did it.

- But I think I might have thrown it away a while ago because I needed bag space.

- Have to remember to check.

- I'll tie a string to my finger to remember.

- I always wondered about that.

- If I forget, what is the string going to do.

- Now I'll wonder why there is a string on my finger.

- Which can easily be answered by the fact I am just weird.

- BRB

- Back

- Did you miss me?

- I bet you did not even notice I was gone.

- Have you seen the new druid cat forms?

- Oh my, oh my god, oh my god.

- They are awesome.

- Have to roll another druid.

- Pick a server, go through all the setting to get it to look exactly how I like it, pick my name, create my character.

- I can not make any more characters.

- :(

- When did I make my 50th.

- Oh, I remember, the hunter I recently got to 80 and locked so maybe I can pick up a herald group.

- I look through my characters and find a DK barely leveled on bronzebeard.

- Say good bye mr troll DK.

- Say hello mr troll druid.

- Troll cat form looks best.

- Just like it looks best now too.

- And just like it has the best flight form.

- Worgen cat forum looks really nice too.

- Night elf one is okay.

- Tauren one is... ~falls asleep~

- Sorry about that, it is just that boring.

- Even with as cool as they look the tauren one still looks really that blah.

- My leather BoA gear is on my other account and I am not going to active it.

- My second set of leather BoA gear is on a monk.

- So, switch it over from the monk or buy a third set.

- I'll buy a third set.

- Decided to do Yogg +0 25 for the mount on my hunter.

- Killed Yogg 4 times.

- 4 times as he died I got turned.

- 4 times it ended up not counting as a kill.

- What am I doing wrong?

- I even looked on the last attempt as I killed him to double check my sanity.

- I was a 68 sanity when he died and I still turned as he died.

- Advice anyone?

- I have to have done something wrong that I am not noticing.

- Something I forgot about maybe?

- I stopped trying for the time being.

- Otherwise I will actually go insane.

- Did the entire run and actually managed to snag a few achievements I did not have yet.

- Mostly because every time I am there I am with someone that wants to do the hard modes so I do them instead.

- Still love that ulduar has so many achievements you can get.

- I still need a bunch and I have run it tons.

- That is how you create content that lasts.

- Why has blizzard gone so far away from the ulduar design for raiding when that was clearly the best design they ever had?

- At the rate I am going I should be able to make the healing mace on my hunter.

- How sad is that?

- Doubt I would be allowed to make it.

- Maces:  The only weapons that are not a hunter weapon.

- One good thing is I have gotten to the point I go through the brain phase without losing any sanity at all.

- It took me all these years before I ever made it through losing 0 sanity

- I had done it only losing 2 before, but never 0.

- They say practice makes perfect, just amazed it took me this long to do it right.

- A friend of mine said let me come with you, then when you kill him there will be someone else there.

- I explained it is easier to solo Yogg +0 than it is to 2 man it.

- Seriously, have you ever tried 2 manning it?

- It is so much harder.

- Near impossible harder I think.

- I have no issues solo.

- Well, except for the recent ones.

- Did some onyxia runs for the mount.

- Nothing.

- 4 hunters and one lock.

- Did some runs through stonecore again for that mount.

- Had not done that in forever.

- Did my full 10 and nothing.

- Seems like it has not changed since when I was doing it all the time.

- I was doing it daily back in cataclysm.

- I had forgot the mounts dropped in normal so I was doing SC and VP on heroic once per day back then.

- I used to call the VP mount the hunter mount.

- Because I was able to solo it as soon as I hit 85.

- Camo past the trash right up to the first boss.

- If you are good at patterns you know the "sweet spot" where you never need to move.

- When tornadoes go in you switch to aspect of the wild and take no damage almost.

- Just stand in one space and kill the boss.

- Love it.

- Absolutely a hunter boss.

- Camo past the second series of trash to the mount boss.

- Avoid crap, use wind, keep boss on pet, rotate FD and deterrence when he tries to hit you, kill boss.

- Not nearly as easy as first boss but not really dreadfully hard either if you do not get hit by breath.

- I got that mount in less than 2 months.

- Stonecore one I was not nearly as lucky with.

- And that one I sure as crap could not solo on heroic as soon as I hit 85.

- Later in the expansion yes, but not at the start like VP.

- I can't believe I went for months doing heroic before I realized they dropped on normal too.

- Someone in guild got one and was not even 85.

- When he mentioned something in guild is when I did that head slap thing.

- I am an idiot, I could have been doing this on normal.

- Stonecore normal was still much harder than VP heroic, but at least I could do it 5 times in a row back then.

- I did it 5 times a day for months and months.

- I gave up a long time ago and occasionally go back and do it.

- On weekends like this when I am just doing things for the hell of doing them.

- Trying to find something interesting to do.

- Killed garrosh twice this week on 2 characters, still none have ever got an heirloom.

- I am completely convinced they do not exist.

- The entire game playing world is working together against me for the longest joke in history.

- How are you guys keeping it a secret from me?

- You probably all have a code that makes it look like you looted one or look like you are wearing one.

- Okay, jokes over, ha ha, you can all stop doing that.

- One guy in my guild says a friend of his has 14 already.

- I can not repeat what I wanted him to tell his friend but I am sure you can guess.

- I just want one weapon.

- I can use it while leveling, go into a dungeon and get a new one when I reach max, and pass it to my next hunter to level.

- Oh well, when 6.0 comes they will be a guaranteed drop if you have never received one.

- So I guess I will be pugging a lot in 6.0.

- Sadly when 6.0 comes I do not know if I will be able to pug mythic, which is currently heroic.

- I like being able to pug heroic and wish we would be able to pug mythic cross server as well.

- I understand why they are making it that you can not pug cross server for mythic.

- I just do not agree with it.

- I would never had gotten anything down in heroic without people from other servers.

- Even with the merge my server is just not that advanced.

- And the few really good guilds there are that are capable of doing heroic are only 8/14 and 10/14.

- And the people in them are complete jack asses to the people that pug.

- One of my guild mates went to a heroic pug this weekend and he said it was a nightmare.

- The raid leader was screaming, not decisive, insulting, and over all a train wreck.

- He said he never appreciated what I do more.

- He said I make raiding easy, I make people feel like they can do anything even when they fail.

- This guy was leading a group of 25 people all with heroic experience and he made every fight sound as if they would be climbing everest and it would be a major achievement.

- He made everything seem harder than it needed to be.

- I like when he compared how I explain a fight to how he did.

- I make even the most difficult fight, one we have never done, sound easy and he said that helps him.

- I explained, different people respond to different things and believe it or not his style might be great for some people.

- One of my two kills this week I was pugged into it.

- The raid leader said what he wanted to do, we wiped 3 times.

- I saw the numbers, offered some suggestions based on the group make up we had, and it took another 3 tries while people got used to the different way and we downed it.

- Not every group is the same, so you can not do the same strategy for every group.

- Might work for easy bosses but from my experience garrosh is still way to hard for most players.

- Funny thing is I would still say that garrosh is easier than LK even with the 30% buff.

- Way the hell easier than LK with the 30% buff.

- You could give LK a 50% buff and garrosh would still be easier.

- I would have preferred the design if they made the bosses harder and added the buffs then making the bosses easier with no buffs.

- Reason being is that I would never bring my lesser characters in on garrosh because I feel everyone needs to be up to snuff whereas if garrosh was a little harder my main still would have downed it, but the buff would have helped me bring my lesser characters later.

- As always, my own opinion, but I support giving the last raid a buff.

- Even more so when we are going to be sitting on the same raid for 6 or 8 or 10 or more months.

- Buffs just makes sense so you can include more people, more alts, and just make it easier over all.

- People like to feel as if they are plowing through things they have done before.

- I've killed garrosh a bunch now on many difficulties and I have never one shot it.

- Okay, I lie, once, but that is it.

- Even with a skilled group that has done it 10 times each at worst someone always makes some mistake and bam you are done.

- So a buff would really be nice.

- So while playing on my lock again I was trying to get back into it.

- Took me a while to find my grove.

- I guess that is the problem with not playing a character often and not being all that well versed in it to begin with.

- I am sitting at 539 on the lock now, was doing around 120K single target at the start and was up to doing 160K single target by the time I was done.

- Just goes to show you that practice really makes a difference.

- I increased my damage by a third just in one day of practice.

- I guess 160K single target is not horrible for a 539 item level.

- Don't know enough about them to comment however.

- But it does make me wonder what the hell this lock I had in a group last week was doing.

- 565 item level with legendary cloak was capping out at 130K and more like 90K on most fights.

- Makes you wonder what the hell they are doing.

- And he is a semi regular raider.

- He is actually what I could call a true casual player.

- He logs in once or twice a week, does a little stuff, get a pug here and there or fills in for the guild run and that is about it.

- Goes to show you that normal mode is not meant for casual players, or better said, normal players because that is what he is, the normal player.

- His numbers are more like flex numbers.

- And even a little low for that too.

- I guess that is why flex will now be normal and normal will now be heroic.

- I have been saying for a long time that normal mode seems more like heroic mode.

- Not because of difficulty so to speak, but because of who I need to bring with me.

- It seems like normal mode is designed to need people that know how to raid.

- I guess that is how it should be, but I never minded bringing others along so they can learn.

- So I am happy they are making flex the new normal.

- Funny part is, even when I do a flex 4 run I am still picky on who I bring.

- Nothing can kill a flex 4 on garrosh faster than only having 2 really high damage dealers and they both get mind contorted.

- I can not tell you the number of wipes I said to myself if only those 2 people do not get MCed we win.

- All because a few poor damage dealers that do not interrupt can really kill a group fast, even on flex.

- Makes you wonder, if that lock I mentioned is the true casual, the model that they want to make normal for, then normal (current flex) is really still too hard for them.

- It is like being between a rock and a hard place.

- Make it much easier and there is nothing to learn from it and make it much harder and you basically push 90% of the people that want to raid out of the raid.

- I do not envy blizzard trying to find the balance so that is it both easy enough and hard enough.

- On that note I am going to get a coffee.

- I need a lot of coffee on mondays.

- Actually, I need a lot of coffee every day.

- Instant human, just add coffee.

- Have a great day.

8 comments:

  1. Don't worry grumpy, mythic SoO will still be doable crossrealm. It will be the current raid tier that will not be crossrealm (much like anything since Fireland)

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    1. I was thinking it might but I am thinking of the future. Next expansion if I want to move further on my server I would need to recruit more of what there are not many of, raiders.

      I like it as it is now. Need 1 or 2 people, pop on open raid, continue along and kill stuff. Nice, easy, and how it should be.

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  2. LFR stories are fun, whether they are painful or happy.

    I went through all of ToT with some friends last night (2 tanks, 1 heal, 1-2 dps) because one needed secrets and another hadn't unlocked all of the wings yet.

    We started off getting sucked into a group with 2 stacks against Horridon. Knowing that execution of mechanics was the failure, I started the fight by dragging the dino to the wrong side of the arena and then telling everybody to go to the door. You can imagine how successful that was, but it ended up getting the point across, after everybody stopped trying to tell me I was doing it wrong. Between the two tanks, we kept Horridon on the far side of the arena the entire time, the raid did moderately well killing off the adds, and we avoided a third wipe. I love how much control the tanks have over LFR, when you've got two competent ones at least. One bad tank can ruin everything like you described on that Thunder King group this week.

    In ToT3, my co-tank got antsy and we ended up with all 4 of the hidden fogs up at once right before Durumu, which ended up killing most of the group. Mass rez was used and we killed Durumu. It wasn't a clean kill, but we got him down a few seconds before the second maze. I told the dead to run in if they had the debuff, and a priest starts complaining ("how hard is it to hit a button"). We get up to Primordius, pull too much trash again, blow mass rez and engage. 2-3 dead and I tell them to run back if they have the debuff. The same (underperforming) priest starts bitching again so I put in raid warning "/rw complain about rezzing 1 more time" "/rw i dare you". They respond "or what?" and my inner group had enough people to initiate the kick. They were gone 10 seconds later. :D It's an abuse of power, but it felt good and you can't let that negative attitude fester in LFR, especially if there are wipes.

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    1. That probably pissed a lot of people off. "How can I pad my meter now you bastard" lol

      It is true how decent tanks can really make things go differently. I remember once in one where we were wiping like crazy going thought tanks. Not even getting to the point of even getting determination most attempts. As soon as we got 2 decent tanks you would have thought it was a completely different group. Everything went from nightmare to smooth as could be.

      See what I say, it is always the worst players that are the most vocal. It might be an abuse of power, but it should teach them that running back is not a bad thing. Anyone that has ever raided knows when to run back and when to wait for a rez. You were just trying to teach them which is which. If you wipe on trash, most of the time run back. If you wipe on the thrash right in front of thok, then you wait for a rez. I hate those people that die on shaman trash and want a rez. You zone in 20 feet from here, just release.

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  3. Not all KT people are bad. My main is stuck there now after following a friend there and then their guild died and they left.

    I thought they changed Yogg 0 so that it was easy with 2 people. I had issues with solo just because I couldn't kill the constrictor. I never got the two Cata dungeon mounts. Those were two I ran quite a bit but eventually gave up on. The change to account wide mounts was definitely a major boost to the mount farming. I got a number of the older ones just by doing it many many times per week. Hopefully some of the MoP ones are soloable for mounts in WoD.

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    1. The link with 2, so unless you stay together you will go insane near instantly. No link with only one.

      There are no MoP mount ones. I could solo them all around ToT gear level, some before that, but none were worth going into because there is nothing to farm in them. They really did a piss poor job with dungeons this expansion.

      Most of the time when there is some jerk acting all high and mighty in an LFR it is someone from KT. It is a running joke in my guild and among everyone I know when they have a bad run. How many people from KT are there. I am sure there are some good people there but in the end you can run with 100 good people from KT and never notice because the good people do not speak up and make jerks of themselves so stand out and you notice them. It just so happens, when you notice them, they always seem to be from KT.

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    2. It's not hard to stay together though, and you generally want to be next to each other to break out of the constrictor anyways. How do you break out when solo because I didn't think you can attack it?

      I meant the MoP raid bosses that have the potential to drop mounts not the dungeons. Like I soloed Alysrazor well over a hundred times this expac trying for her mount without success. If I can solo the world bosses and Elegon next expac on more than one class I'm guessing I'd take the time to do that quite a bit. I got the BC era raid mounts and a couple of the Wrath era mounts this expac by being able to solo them on so many toons a week with account wide mounts I didn't have to care that it didn't drop for my main mount collector anymore.

      You are right there are a lot of jerks on KT. It's a higher pop server and it seems a number of the higher pop servers breed that type of player. I don't know if it's because they are more likely to have high level pve and pvp guilds being high pop or what. I definitely would like to get back off of it, but it was at least good for finding pugs to run Ulduar and ICC with me when I was working on the mace and axe. My normal server was pretty low pop and tough to find anyone till they merged it.

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    3. I am a hunter, it is easy to break it out solo.

      I leave my pet on passive, so it is always next to me and hit this.

      /cleartarget
      /tar Constrictor
      /petattack [exists,nodead]
      /cast Bite(Basic Attack)

      Being my pet is next to me it will target the correct one, the one near me, and I am out usually instantly at this gear level, if not then on the second attack.

      Staying together is easy for people that understand the concept. I have a problem finding people like that who would be willing to run with me. You might not think staying together is a skill but trust me, it sure as hell is. And it grabs 2 people if there are 2 people there, so you can not break out each other, you would still need to break yourself out. At least that is what happened in the couple of attempts I made with another person. I can do it solo so after trying it with another person and having so many problems I went back to doing it solo. Might just be my experience with it, yours might vary.

      I still need most of the wrath mounts sadly, and the cataclysm ones. I go back from time to time and try them with no luck but at least it gives me something to do when I am bored.

      I think the higher pop servers breed them because there is a larger audience for them and that encourages them to be jerks even more.

      High pop servers do have that advantage with making it easier to pug. My server I can not get anything done on. I have further heroic progression cross server then on my server. Heck, I have more heroic progression than the most advanced guild on my server. But each, small and large, have their pluses and minuses. It is a pick your poison thing.

      All said, I would rather be on the lowest of low population servers and have all content be capable of being done cross realm. Best of both worlds. Yes, it is me being greedy. :)

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