Monday Random Thoughts

- I finished my second ring this past week.

- Still do not think I will ever come close to the number of capes I had on alts last expansion.

- The only reason I have a second ring finished is I have been tanking a lot again lately.

- So my tank has had the chance to get more kills in.

- But LFR sucks worse than it ever has so I really do not like bringing my alts through there.

- So that means no legendary for them.

- It was a great part of last expansion, even if LFR did have bad moments when it was new.

- Remember the maze boss in ToT when it first came out?

- Heck, remember the maze boss even after it had been out for well over a year?

- More than half the raid still always died.

- But over all, it was doable.

- This expansion, not so much.

- Or at least not worth the effort.

- The reward, namely the ring, is so horrible and lackluster, that I do not have the desire to get it on alts.

- Now if the cooldown was a personal one and not a group one, so I can use it when I wanted to for my own uses, I might be more inclined to get more of them.

- Hey, I am the one that did the work for it, the least that should happen is I get the benefit from it and can use it at my discretion.

- What brain dead employee came up with this idea of having other people be able to use my ring?

- And what dim wit gave the green light to add it to the game?

- I really wonder who the hell the people making the game now are.

- They sure as hell are not gamers.

- But back to the ring.

- I tanked a direct run to the end through the portal with a mano and archie kill only this week, but with only 5 tomes left I figured I would try to give LFR a shot to finish it.

- Heck, if I end up tanking even more kills as time goes by, might as well get a ring on that character so I can upgrade it right?

- Been tanking more lately, but usually only a few bosses a week.

- And, as odd as this sounds, the drop rate for tomes seems to be at least double in LFR, so I figured I would knock it out this week.

- I did, and for parts of it there were no problems.

- First one I got into was a slow ass run, but no wipes.

- Half the raid was doing DPS you would expect from someone in 610 gear doing their first dungeons.

- And being that is the standard level of game play I see from most players, even ones that consider themselves raiders, and blizzard did not design LFR for the standard average player, the fights took too long and were a lot harder than they needed to be.

- I swear healing iron reaver in LFR has to be the most challenging healing I have ever done in my life.

- And while I am by no means a great healer, I have healed some very challenging content before, and compared to that, iron reaver in LFR takes the cake.

- But we did not wipe.

- So I can not complain really.

- Nor would I, a run with no asshats and no wipes is a dream come true in the LFR, even if it does take a lot longer to down bosses than it should.

- I got 3 tomes from the 3 bosses.

- Second one I got in on, the first boss was down already and the last boss was mano which I already killed so I was not going to stay for it, as I was only there for tomes and the second boss was the only one I could get one from.

- And I got one.

- Zhul took 4 wipes and 4 stacks of determination to get the kill.

- Did not make a difference that people in the know kept saying kill adds from before the first pull happened and all throughout the fight.

- No one listened.

- It was not the four stacks that helped kill the boss, it was the fact that we lost a bunch that dropped out.

- Oddly, the ones that rage quit were the ones that were doing it wrong.

- It is like "you idiots can not get it down even if it is my own fault so I am going to leave to find another group to carry me instead of actually learning the fight."

- So between half the damage dealers that did not switch to adds leaving, and some people kicking out others that had no add damage, we ended up getting replacements that did switch to adds.

- It was night and day.

- Sure you can say the 4 stacks helped, how could it not, but the fact most of the new people switched to adds, the fight went down fast, smooth and easy.

- And more importantly, I got a tome.

- 4 for 4 in tomes so far.

- Told you LFR has a higher drop rate than the real raid.

- I did 12 bosses and 13 bosses the previous weeks and got a total of 3 tomes.

- 3 tomes in 25 kills.

- I just got 4 in 4 kills.

- Yeah, LFR has a higher drop rate.

- Call it anecdotal evidence if you must, but I am convinced by my own experiences and the reports of dozens of others that have experienced the same thing.

- The drop rate for tomes is MUCH better in LFR.

- Next run I got into "the wind" boss where they are already fighting, and wiping, on the trash.

- This does not bode well.

- I thought the DPS was bad in the first group I had?

- Oh I was wrong.

- This group makes that first group look like gods walking on azeroth.

- Lets not even talk about throwing the orb.

- No one picked it up at the start, so when the wind came I grabbed it in threw it to someone.

- Do I really need to say the next line because you surely already know it.

- That person held it the entire fight.

- We wiped to the enrage timer.

- Not to some orb throwing error.

- The orb throwing is not really important in LFR, but I wish people would do it, you know, to learn, so when they get there later I do not have to teach them.

- Yeah, the DPS was that bad.

- Worse than the group I said was filled with half the group doing DPS you would expect from 610 item level player.

- We wiped a couple more times to the enrage boss before we got it down.

- When we did get it down, with a 15% buff I believe, we barely missed enrage again.

- Worse than a poor group was the fact I got no tome.

- I really wanted this done already.

- But really I can't complain, 4 out of 5 is still pretty darn good.

- I started to think to myself, why did I decide to rush it?

- The rest of this raid is going to be a nightmare if the first boss is any example of what they are capable of doing.

- Even if I only downed a few bosses each week on my druid I would get it sooner or later between normal and heroic clears.

- And if I get into a full clear again next week 1 more would have to drop right?

- Maybe?

- Hell, I will just stay and see what happens.

- We get to the next boss and one of the tanks (I got brought in as a healer not as a tank) says with the DPS we had on the last fight we will never be able to do this fight.

- I agreed, did not say anything in chat but he was 100% right.

- The boss gets pulled, with time warp on the pull, the top 5 of the DPS charts looked something like this.

- One hunter doing 48K, a warrior doing 23K, and then 3 classes I do not recall doing 18K, 16K and 15K.

- The remainder are much lower.

- My wrath spam on the pull had me at 7th for a short bit.

- And I am a healer... with wrath.

- That is the top five, on the pull, with all their burst, trinkets procing and time warp.

- I sure as hell hope the tank knows what to do because that is the only prayer we have right now.

- When we knock the boss out of the machine one tank jumps in.

- The other tank tanks him where he lands in the middle of nowhere.

- The add comes out that need to be tanked and interrupted and neither of those two things happen.

- The one "good" damage dealer that switched to him immediately became the tank for the add.

- And proved even hunters doing good DPS for an LFR can still be huntards, he did not last very long as a tank.

- I was pouring heals into him and could see at least one other healer was too.

- Did he feign death?  No.

- Did he deterrence? No.

- He just face tanked it and died and then the add went on to kill me and the other healer, because we had healing aggro.

- Gee thanks.

- It then went on to kill others that were foolish enough to attack it.

- Where were the tanks during this?

- The active tank was tanking the boss of course, as adds ripped apart the raid, he noticed nothing.

- The tank that got into the machine was beating on the boss with everything he had.

- Did it matter the boss had a shield on?  Of course not, he kept beating on it.

- Because that "immune" message must not mean anything important right?

- I swear I think I have discovered the worst two tanks to ever tank the LFR.

- Sad part is, one of those very tanks was the same person that was smart enough to realize that we did not have the DPS for this.

- Guess that doesn't change the fact he can still be a bad tank, because he was.

- When he went back into the robot a total of 3% was off of the boss.

- And entire transition phase and 3% was taken off the boss.

- /cry

- Do I really want to finish the ring this badly?

- I am already here, I want to see what happens.

- Round two goes the same, mostly.

- The tank moves the boss to the add this time and actually tanks it.

- Too bad the big bad machine tank was of no help what so ever, again.

- The horrid DPS in this group was out DPSing him because he kept attacking an immune boss.

- This guy must have taken his stupid pills this morning, doubled dipped in them even.

- People said between pulls that the boss does not take damage when the add is out.

- People in the attempt kept yelling to stop attacking the boss.

- But nope, none of that sunk in.

- We kick machine tank and oddly enough a bunch of the lower than low DPS leave again.

- They have their "You guys suck, I will find a better group to carry my sorry ass" jive going.

- I offer to switch to tank figuring being I have done it on normal and heroic LFR should be no problem and the fact I never tanked it in LFR meant nothing.

- The healers revolt and tell me I am not allowed to.

- I was only 3rd in healing partly due to lack of practice and two very well geared healers ahead of me.

- So when those very well geared healers said they needed me, I listened.

- They were way better than I, and they are in a better place to judge what is needed, so that idea got scratched.

- Did not take long to get a new tank however, 5 or 6 minutes actually, which is really good.

- Next attempt some DPS jumps in the machine, has no clue what he is doing, it was accidentally.

- No biggie, it happens, someone types out instructions on the fly, the DPS does a fair job with it.

- We still wipe.

- I thought third time was a charm, maybe it is forth.

- A few more poor DPS drop and we get lucky enough to replace them with better numbers.

- Once again for the day my group downs a boss so super easy that it makes you think it was not the 15% buff, it was the people in the group.

- And really, it was the people in the group and not the 15%.

- Sure the 15% helps, but we had a tank that knew the machine and actually got in it, the other tank moved the boss and tanked the mob he was supposed to tank instead of letting it kill people, and we had numbers, numbers that were higher because of better people, not because of 15% alone.

- There was an 80K, a few 60K and a bunch over 40K.

- Not to mention the tank doing over 80K myself in the machine.

- We seemed to have weeded out nearly all the slackers, woohoo.

- Next fight would be a breeze with this group.

- But I did mano already this week, so no reason to stay.

- And more importantly, I got my tome.

- Woo f'n hoo.

- So more reason not to stay.

- I got out of their like a bad out of hell.

- Or is that a crow out of darnassus?

- "Bat out of hell", that sounds like an awesome name for a blog about a troll druid that does a lot of LFRing.

- Either way my druid now has a completely useless legendary ring too.

- Versatility?  Really blizzard?

- How about reduce damage taken for the entire raid by 50% for 6 seconds, kind of like the DS tanking sets had.

- That would have been awesome.

- How about increase bonus armor by 50%.

- That would be a survival and DPS boost at the same time, you choose when you use it and for what purpose, burn or survival.

- Oh wait, that would not work, I have no control over my own ring.

- Boo!

- As horrible as it all was, it was awesome just the same.

- I have not had a Hell-FR horror story to tell in a while.

- And it also means I logged in this week to do something other than just raid.

- Even if it was... to raid... sort of.

- I look back on it with both horror and humor.

- It is funny seeing what we put ourselves through sometimes.

- But it is scary that this is one of the reasons I am not playing much this expansion.

- There is no fun, simple and easy thing for me to do with my alts that gets a decent reward worth the effort.

- Always loved the dungeons for valor gear situation.

- If that was still in game I would be playing the hell out of the game.

- But no dungeons worth doing, no valor gear, and blizzards OCD nature of trying to force everyone into raiding, which means LFR for the vast majority, ruined it for me.

- Sorry, but after that experience, I truly believe that LFR should drop better than mythic gear.

- Because that is the only thing that would make doing it on a regular basis worth it.

- And funny part is, even if LFR dropped item level 800 gear, I probably still would not do it on most of my alts.

- It is not fun.

- Reward needs to equal effort.

- Sorry, but wiping with strangers needs a much greater reward.

- I've said it before and I will say it again.

- I do not mind wiping 100 times with guild to down a boss, I still find that fun, but wiping even once with strangers that can not be taught and refuse to learn is not fun.

- So blizzard needs to do what they can, in my opinion, to make it so random groups don't wipe, or it is not fun.

- And when we play for fun, shouldn't the desire of the game makers to be to offer fun?

- Find me one person that "likes" wiping with strangers and finds it fun and I will show you someone on some really powerful drugs.

- Or in need of mental help.

- Blizzard needs to work on adding fun back into the game.

- Each persons fun is different but for me spamming dungeons for valor and buying valor gear for alts was fun.

- It was also easy more often than not, which is partly what made it fun.

- Things like that are important to the game, things people can do that are fun.

- Fun needs to be added or their subs will just keep declining.

- And flying?

- Sorry, added it way to late to be a saving grace.

- BTW, am I the only one that still uses ground mounts around my garrison if I am just going to the basic buildings sometimes?

- My gnome really loves his pink tailstrider.

- I had intended to log on and do some archaeology on my main this week.

- I wanted to get back into playing a little more.

- But in the end, I could not bring myself to do it.

- I do not feel motivated to play.

- And the sad part is that I am open and receptive to playing.

- I want to play.

- I just can't find anything worth playing for.

- That is a big problem as I see it.

- When someone wants to play, they are looking to play, and they still can not find a reason to do so.

- Seems I am not alone either.

- Friday night was always a busy night in my guild, which still has a fair deal of active players many nights.

- But this friday, I was alone online.

- During the after work/school times I was alone.

- During the dinner time push there was one person that cycled through their characters.

- And at the prime time, when we used to always have over 30 on at most times and at least 15 at bad times, I was alone.

- Well not completely alone, there was one person on remote chat.

- They just were not saying anything.

- The game seems to be in a really bad place right now.

- I hope it gets better.

- I've taken a long break and I want to start playing more again.

- I am just having my trouble finding my motivation.

- Can't figure out what to do, and with no one else on line, no one to talk to either for inspiration.

- Sad times indeed.

- But try not to let it get to you, I am trying too.

- Have a great day.