Monday Morning Warcraft... kinda

Morning Blog Lovers!

It's another exciting Monday morning. I usually spend my first few hours of work on Monday getting caught up on my news from the weekend. Since it seems that I can't do anything but play WOW on my home computer, I usually get backed up a couple of days on my blog reading and email.

Thank you to everyone that commented on my first post, I was glad to get that out of the way. I noticed that the doctor decided to skip Monday Morning Warcraft, so I figured I would put something up.

Heroic Failure

So what is the deal with people leveling to 80 and going straight into heroics? I know that the nerf in leveling has everyone under the impression that they are a lot better than they really are but don't they realize that they are a drag on everyone else? It usually happens too that most of them leveled so fast that they don't completely understand their class or the game itself for that matter. I saw some dps this weekend that I can rival with my 71 druid or hunter. It makes me sad.

I usually try not to get annoyed or involved with this kind of group. I usually only run with real life friends, having to grab maybe one person out of the looking for group channel. This weekend was a little differnt. I have a real life friend who used to play the game. While he played he got a few family members involved and I got a chance to meet and play with them. Even though he hasn't played in 6 months I get invites from his family members to groups all of the time. I usually have a great excuse with farming or raiding but with my lack of heroics lately I finally ran out of excuses this weekend.

The fail

I am running around trying to get my dailies done and I get an invite from my buddy's niece for heroic TOC. I am automatically annoyed because I don't prefer Paladin healers. I try to get my Druid buddy an invite to heal but she already has a full group. So reluctently I accept the invite. Before I get a chance to type "hi"in the party chat I see a message from this shammy, "Oh man I think I can get a better tank than that". I don't really pay much attention to this. I assume that he is a noob and that he is looking at my hit points assuming I am acutally going to tank with 22k hps. My friend politely informs him that I am in my ret gear and sends me a tell apoligizing for the noob comment.

This shaman continues to run his mouth my whole ride there. Giving everyone tips about their class or role before we even get there. So as soon as I zone in I inspect his gear. Wouldn't you know, all greens but 2. I ask and he informs me that he is a fresh 80. I thought to give him a few suggestions but he seems like a know it all. So instead, I sigh again and figure there is no harm in trying.

The three champions come out and again it seems like someone is out to get me. (You'll have to excuse my lack of knowledge on names) We end up with a rogue /warrior/mage combo. Of course it is a quick wipe. No one seems to understand the concept of kill skull first or avoid the aoe.

We go a second time. The first whirlwind/poison combo and I watch all five of the health bars plummet. I don't really understand because besides the DK and me, we have all casters. The second time around both the shaman and warlock die. The shaman /yells "great healing noob!". I check my dps meter and see that he is barely putting out 1k dps so I kick him. Yeah I know what you're thinking, I am a huge jerk for kicking this guy in the middle of the boss fight but by this time it's him or me. Besides, it's a wipe anyway.

The lock and healer laugh at my annoyance after the fight. The DK had some choice words for me kicking his buddy. I informed him that people that are that bad should never comment on the play of others. Just like his friend he starts to critisize the healer and even throws a few shots at me. I link the dps meter and then kick him from the group as well. I would tell you what I told him after that but then I would get into my rant about tanking classes that don't tank and complain about you (gonna save that for future material).

I added a couple of hunters just be be sure that we had no more issues with the aoe. One of them was a real life friend so I knew that I had at least one other person in the group that wasn't a rtard.

At this point I have nothing left to complain about except the healer. She did a pretty good job considering. It just makes me nervous to see my hps go down that far before I get a heal. I do my best to help her out though. Since we all know that tanking as a pally is stupid easy, I get enough aggro then help her heal. We do fine all the way until the 3rd phase of the Black Knight. Both hunters died and zoned back in twice. After their 2nd death the healer died. I stood there and healed myself and the lock for the last 10%. I gave it a /flex and quit the group without looting.

I later apologized for leaving so quick and even offered to tank the next instance. That story isn't as interesting. I will say that I learned it's possible for a tank to lead a heroic Violet Hold in dps and have two people doing around 1k dps and still not fail.

Potts' noob guide to being 80

So I am going to try to help out and make my own noobs guide of being 80. I won't include the first point which is obvious. If this is your first toon I would suggest trying all of the low level dungeons when it comes time. I know that you level faster without and the gear is worthless a few level later but it's nice to understand the concept of how the group works before you get to the top level and embarrass yourself by not knowing what a tank is.

1. Understand your class. Read a guide and find a rotation. Understand all the spells and the tricks you may need to get yourself out of trouble.

2. Turn 80

3. Gear. Hopefully you have run a few instances before 80 and have a couple of pieces to start with. If not, there are enough craftable pieces out there to get a good start. Hopefully you have a profression that you can make your own or at least made some money to do so.

4. Run regular instances and do some kind of dailies. The money from the dailies can be put toward those craftable items that I was just talking about. Heck while you're at it you may get a cute little pet to go along with it.

5. Start heroics. DO NOT start them if you are not wearing mostly level 80 blue gear. I understand that there are some exceptions but with the craftables and boe gear there is no excuse to come to a heroic green from Howling Ford.

6. Collect a few pieces of badge gear, join a guild and start raiding. Yes join a guild. Find one that is just starting out. Actually learn the fights instead of getting me killed in a pug.

7. Have fun. That is why were here.

note: you can skip steps 3-5 if you have patient friends that want to run you through stuff. However you CAN NOT get around having to learn how to not be a noob. Only you can prevent this.

My suggestions to Blizzard

I realize that there is no real incentive to do a regular instance. Why do pointless grinding if you can go with a skilled group and ride them to a 4 badges a chance at a nice piece of gear? Maybe along with downgrading badges blizzard could do a badge system with regular instances. Offer one badge on the final boss of the instance. This could get the noobs off my back. I mean it's not like we aren't nerfing everything else.