Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Tuesday Random Thoughts

- Random thoughts are a day late because I had off work yesterday, so I played instead of writing.

- I finished getting my stash in Diablo so I decided to get back to some warcraft.

- It was a nice break for a month playing less.

- Made it more enjoyable playing.

- Breaks are needed and it seems as I get older, and the game gets older, I need more and more breaks to keep the game enjoyable.

- Hey, whatever floats your boat right?

- I stayed on really late Sunday night because I was not working Monday.

- I decided to level archaeology on an alt.

- Why would I choose to level archaeology on an alt one might ask.

- Because my hunter is well over 700 tol'vir solves so far and still has not got the bug mount or the claw pet.

- I figure maybe having another character do it might stir up some luck.

- I honestly do not see how it is impossible to have over 100 solves of every tol'vir artifact and still not have those two.

- But it is my luck..

- So I hung out on voice chat and BSed with whomever was on at the time while I did some digging.

- I decided on my druid to level archaeology on.

- Instant flight form means less time mounting up moving from place to place.

- Not to mention I have the mage tower fully leveled on my druid.

- So I can use my garrison hearth and my shipyard compass to get back to my garrison and use my mage tower to get to the "far" places.

- I set up the ports to Nagrand, Frostfire and Spires.

- With all that and the mole machine to Gorgrond, I was set for hopping around from dig site to dig site.

- I made it to a little over 600.

- Which just so happens to be exactly what you need to be able to trade in restored artifacts for tol'vir fragments.

- What a coincidence huh?

- Needless to say I planned it like that.

- I had a total of 60 restored artifacts when I started turning it in.

- I managed to make 6 common finds and one rare find.

- Sadly the rare find was a, now useless, BoA ring.

- But it was not a total waste.

- I managed to snag three new mounts while doing this.

- I always said to a guild mate to plays late at night that I was so jealous of him.

- He always got all the rare mounts, all the rare pets, all the hard to find stuff.

- All because he was on when everyone else was sleeping.

- I experienced that myself.

- When I went to a dig site in Frostfire there was a rare boar there at the dig site.

- I killed it, got the great greytusk mount.

- Awesome.

- So this is what it is like playing late at night.

- Not even looking for mounts and getting them.

- I then had a dig site in Shadowmoon, not to long after.

- And there is the pathrunner just outside of the dig site I landed on.

- You have got to be kidding me.

- I kill it and walk away with the swift breezestrider mount.

- About 30 minutes later while flying through Nagrand, on the way to a dig site mind you, I see luk'hok.

- I swoop down and kill him and gladly collect my mottled meadowstomper mount.

- Three mount.

- Not looking for them.

- Just because I was on late at night.

- And this is exactly why I get so jealous sometimes when my friend has every rare mount in the game usually within the first week of release.

- He said he must see all of them, even poundfist, a few times a week.

- And now later in the expansion they can sit up for a long time before someone runs into them.

- He always said "if things like that could be traded everyone in the guild would have them."

- Which makes me question, should things like that be capable of being traded?

- I sense a post in that all by itself.

- I see some definite pluses an minuses to the idea.

- I did mythic dungeons this weekend.

- Did raids this weekend my my main and on two different alts.

- Even did some old raids.

- Killed the lich king 5 more times with nothing to show for it except 25 minutes wasted.

- But I had a lot of fun just wasting time.

- All because I took that time off made it fun.

- Do you want to hear a funny story before I end this random thoughts?

- Who am I kidding, of course you do.

- And even if you don't, here goes.

- A guild tank, an incredible DK, asks if anyone want in on a mythic.

- I say yet, another guild hunter says yet and a monk DPS says yes.

- He asks in guild if any healers are on.

- He asks in voice chat if any healers are on.

- We are talking about needing a healer and I offer to switch to a healer, the monk who has healing gear but never healed offers to switch to healer.

- The tank finally says, we will just pug one.

- Then someone in voice chat speaks up.

- "I have a monk that could do it, but his gear sucks."

- The tank says not to worry, we are a powerful group, we can carry a low healer.

- We decide on grimrail depot as no one in the group has done that one this week.

- We zone in and kill the trash, no problems.

- He kill the first boss, both monks die but otherwise no problems.

- And then I notice something.

- The second monk is in DPS spec.

- I asked, where you trying to heal in your DPS spec.

- He said "I don't have a healing spec."

- Excuse me.

- For 5 minutes we were talking about needing a healer, maybe one of us switching to a healer and then finally saying we would pug a healer when you volunteered.

- How do you not have a healing spec when you said you would come heal?

- Either way, I say, lets just continue along, we can do this.

- "with no healer?" the other hunter exclaims.

- I said, yes, trust me.

- We will do it like challenge modes.

- Huge trash pulls, potions on the trash, and we should have no problems.

- And we had no problems.

- We destroyed the place on mythic with no healers.

- Well, the tank did say we would carry him, so I guess we did.

- He died a few more times, but no one else did.

- It was fun and because of it I can say for sure that with 4 decent DPS and one DK tank with their amazing self heals, you do not need a healer for mythic dungeons.

- Grimrail has to be the most brutal of dungeons and if we could do it with only 3 DPS and a tank basically, then with 4 it would be a breeze for any group.

- I just thought it was funny someone offering up to come and as healer when they could not heal.

- Did he really think we would not notice?

- And he, my friends, is the average warcraft player.

- Doesn't really have a clue what is going on most of the time.

- Speaking of not having a clue, in case you did not notice the holiday boss is up.

- So make sure to get your runs in to try and get the love rocket.

- I did all my characters yesterday and had no luck.

- Darn, was hoping my weekend luck with mounts would have continued, but oh well.

- Good luck with your love rocket.

- Have a great day.

13 comments:

  1. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    "I don't have a healing spec."

    Shakes head and wanders off towards the ol' folks home...

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    1. You would think a group looking for a healer would want someone with a healing spec... but what the hell do I know. Maybe I'll join you in the old folks home.

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  2. If I can help it, I only go in with 4 dps groups. Whether the 5th is a healer or tank matters little if you've got a couple hunters.

    I wonder if any hunters have solo'ed a mythic dungeon yet.. The cat boss on the iron docks would cause problems if you can't burst him down before he jumps on you. I think I'm gonna go see what I can do; good idea, grumpy!

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    Replies
    1. I've soloed everbloom and many bosses in other ones. I get bored and like to try it from time to time. I will get more done before the end of the expansion. If I were in a better guild and had mythic gear I am 100% certain I could solo them all. But at my item level some are hard.

      For the cat boss time his leap and FD just as he casts it. He will not have a target and go back to basic attacks on your pet.

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  3. Was in a pug mythic last week and got to the 2nd boss before I realized we had no healer, the lead said that's the only way he will run them. Did 3 more with the group, all went well.

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    1. With "good" players I can see that being the best way for speed clears. With some of the pugs I got into, a healer is needed. lol How do people at 700 item level still do 10K?

      Delete
  4. Since we're being random on tuesdays now... I'm not sure why, but I thought you'd appreciate this:

    So, I for some reason decided to do the ring on another hunter. As such, I went into LFR, quite undergeared to collect whatever I'm collecting at the moment. The first boss I queued into was Archie.

    The very first thing that happened, of course, was some asshat DK ran in and pulled the three mini-bosses and archie. Everyone eventually died. While people were discussing who did it (to kick), the second the boss respawned, he released and ran back in, doing the same thing. Finally a vote to kick window popped up (I had right clicked him and tried to kick him immediately, so I guess finally enough people did), which passed, but before he was teleported out, he did it again, but without the archie (just the three guys).

    I don't know why I stayed past the first wipe, but I was watching netflix in the other screen, so I just thought "meh, this is probably what all the groups are like". Then, a pally tank kind of took over, he actually used ready checks, and then a pull timer. And then he actually moved the boss out of the green swirlies.

    But then I something else totally unexpected happened. People started doing the fight. Most of the ranged grouped up where you'd expect range to group up, and kited the doomfire line away from the group (there was one person who just stood there, but everyone else did great). I don't know if everyone did, but enough people swapped targets so the doomfire and deathcallers died quickly. Not everyone got in the purple swirlies, but enough of us did that no one dropped below 70ish percent health.

    Then when Banish came up, several of us actually got in there (instead of everyone running away and it just selecting randomly, as was my only other experience of archie LFR). The first group, that I went down with, killed the guy pretty quickly, and actually killed the little blob thing that knocks you back. We came out before the first infernals, I distracting shot one of the infernals, thinking at least one wouldn't be in the middle of the group, and then something that I rarely even see normal/heroic groups get right (pugs, I mean), other people peeled off the other two, we had none of them on the boss, or close to each other.

    I don't know if that mechanic even matters in LFR. But I was just amazed after such a horrible start, it turned out I was in a group with a lot of people who knew what they were doing.

    Was a very pleasant surprise, and kind of gave me hope for the wow community. Maybe the trolls aren't as numerous as I had thought, and there's a silent majority that's just being overshadowed.

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    1. I'd be fine playing the game without jerks. Shadowban them and let them play with each other, I say.

      Unfortunately, Blizzard not only doesn't make a show of enforcing good behavior (I'm being charitable and assuming they do it in secret), they also don't give players the tools to set community standards ("no naming and shaming").

      There's no way to do a battle.net-wide ignore even though there IS a way to do a battle.net-wide friending. This matters because adding someone to your ignore list prevents you from being grouped with them in dungeon finder and LFR (another of the myriad nuggets of WoW knowledge that is totally undiscoverable in-game).

      You can't easily report someone for griefing (it's not even an option in the "report" drop-down when you right click a name). And if they are griefing but don't say anything in chat you have to figure out how to right click their name.

      If they were toxic in chat and you reported them for language already, you just made it harder on yourself to add them to an ignore list or report them because their name disappeared from the chat that was scrolling by just a moment ago.

      Openraid kind of has player ratings but it's an external site only used by a few, and Gearscore/Playerscore tried to do shared community player ratings but they wanted to charge for it and no one wanted to pay. oQueue was the first persistent p2p store that kept player points and stuff but it was never used for that purpose, and was basically disabled by Blizzard because it was too awesome (to be fair it had a lot of crap in it and the creator was a bit caustic, but Blizzard's version is still an inferior tool).
      --
      Regards,

      regardsanon

      p.s. I love WoW, but Blizzard has been neglecting it for years. Don't get me started on the guildfinder tool or the death of the "Mentor guilds" program.

      Delete
    2. @Del

      Some groups are like they, they will surprise you. Even more so if you do it the day of the reset. There are still a lot of actual raiders that do it on tues (in US) and that means a lot of people that actually still follow mechanics.

      I have a saying about LFR. Good raiders are the ones that still follow mechanics because good players know that failure to follow mechanics makes them a bad player.

      Over all however, you will find groups like that to be 20-25% of the time, at best. You got lucky. Ones like the one with that DK are far more likely. You had both at the same time.

      @Regardsanon

      I would love playing the game without jerks. Actually, I think I would play more, at least more random stuff, without them.

      Blizzard does a dreadful job in moderating its game and a dreadful job with giving people the tools to do it themselves. I believe, like you it seems, the game would be a much better place if they did something.

      The mentor guilds died a fast death, didn't they?

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    3. > The mentor guilds died a fast death, didn't they?

      It seemed like a such an obviously great idea to have a friendly default space for noobs. Pair noobs with helpful friendly people = win win. (This is one of the reasons I hate the dismal failure of a guildfinder tool even more. The game basically doesn't help you AT ALL finding a guild of active friendly helpful people as a noob, and I think the game is WAY more fun when you find that.)

      Yes it did die a fast death. I don't know how long the program lived, but when it died it was sudden and barely mentioned, and there was no retrospective so we don't know what the result was.

      They just kind of mentioned the guy who had been spearheading the initiative had moved on to other things.

      Was it a success but Blizzard just didn't want to dedicate resources to it, was it a dismal failure, we will never know.

      Did the guy move on because he wanted to, or was he reassigned, or did he quit, or what?
      --
      regards,

      regardsanon

      Delete
  5. so there is a centive (sic)to get one's archeology up? Rare mounts???

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    1. Yeah, a few mounts. I want the bug one, looks like one of the ones you can use only in the AQ raids. But you can use it outside. Over 700 finds so far and nothing, sadly.

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  6. A good designer, like a fantastic artist, will take in the very best of what they see to create something new and distinctive.

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