Echoes In My Head

Yep.  I started playing again.

That’s what I said the last few times somebody quit raiding to focus on their social life or job, and that’s what they said when I quit.

Around the beginning of this month, my second World of Warcraft account expired.  Before I bailed, I talked to a few people online about the fact that I was going away and didn’t plan to come back. I tried not to make a big deal of it in guildchat, but the few people I did talk to were very quick to classify it as “taking a break” instead of leaving the game.

Me, I’m not so sure.  I’ve got two accounts, with 3 characters at 85 now.  I have a hunter, a paladin and a warrior.  At least two of them are useful, but I just don’t feel like I have the dedication or interest in me to grind reputation to get enough 333 items to be relevant in a heroic.

I really wish I could put into words what soured me on the Warcraft deal.  My former guild is pretty fantastic and I wish them the best, but I really don’t see myself playing much anymore.

Then again, they always come back.

I’m so glad you people don’t know who the fuck I am.

I’ve seen the search terms you use to get here.

You are all creepy.

It brings out the best in everyone.

the recruiting process

If you’re familiar with the idea of a Venn diagram, draw one now.  You’ve got the people who can do the content, the people you like, and the people that meet recruiting criteria.  In the best of all possible worlds, that intersection is your guildmates.

In the real world, your guildmates are 1/3 of that set.

People still keep searching for this, so I guess there’s some demand for hunter-specific information about ICC encounters.

Since we are now 8/12 in 25 man hardmodes and I (like every other mouthbreathing retard) have a Kingslayer title, I suppose I can with some confidence provide further guidance for people learning the Blood wing.  That’s the place with the queens and the disco balls that isn’t San Francisco.

Trash

The trash pulls in this wing are actually pretty funny.  Make sure you misdirect the big advisor thing towards a moonkin, because it’s hilarious when they go flying across the room.  Apart from that, FD often because the tacticians will sap anything except a bear and your tanks probably aren’t smart enough to figure that out in time to save your precious face.  Make sure you laugh when people die to the stacking dot after each pull.

Blood Princes

Balls.  Balls.  Balls.  Balls.

Get it out of your system now because you’re going to be juggling, smacking, bouncing and chasing balls this entire fight.  Your guild isn’t really mature enough to do this without giggling like schoolgirls.  Whoever designs encounters here just can’t get enough of balls.

You and your pet are very important in this fight.  Every time you hear the audible cue “My cup runneth over” a new Kinetic Bomb has spawned.  This is a ball.  It falls from the ceiling and if hits the ground your entire raid is pretty much fucked.  You need to smack that ball around and push it back up in the air.  Your pet is pretty good at this too.  Set it on passive, send it at the ball, and it’ll handle that one entirely.

Stay off the stage, because if you’re up there, the melee will blame you for their inability to get out of their own way.  In fact, just stand way the hell and gone back by the door because there is so much stupid shit flying around in this fight that it isn’t even funny.  There are balls of light, balls of fire, balls of shadow and weird-ass vortexes that send people without range finders across the room.

Sit in the back and play with your balls until it’s over, just like you do in every other fight.  Stay entertained by killing Dark Nucleii before your tank can get to them.

Blood Queen

This is a pretty straightforward fight for hunters.  Just press buttons as fast as you can.  If you get bitten first, make sure you call out for all the damage-enhancing cooldowns that melee types can give you.  You won’t get them, but false hope is better than no hope at all.

Finally, during the Bloodbolt Whirl, be aware that Deterrence will protect you from bolts, but will not protect anyone around you from the splash damage.  Try to hug a rogue during this phase.

One of the other druids in our guild went on vacation.  In his absence, he’s asked people to fill in and do guest posts.  Our resident manic tree person already got all mathy and stuff.

My fellow hunter and I were asked to contribute, and I’m not entirely sure how the fuck this is supposed to work.  We were given a task – we needed to explain why it’s more important to heal a hunter pet than a rogue.

Frankly, I think it’s self-evident, but apparently there is some debate, and even though this is patently ridiculous, some people are actually suggesting that rogues deserve to be healed.

First of all, rogues aren’t people.  They’re subhuman at best.

Secondly, Revive Pet casts 4036 mana.  An average hunter doesn’t have much more than 17 or 18k raid buffed.  Res’ing pets is expensive.  In contrast, a druid’s out of combat res for a player is only 2517 mana.  A druid has a larger mana pool than a hunter, and regenerates it faster.  So, from a resource management perspective, it’s definitely more important to heal a pet.

Thirdly, let’s look at the targets in question here.

This is a hunter pet:

He’s warm, fuzzy, friendly and loyal.  Look at those soulful eyes, and that warm soft fur.  Don’t you want to keep him alive?  He’s boosting the nearest hunter’s attack power every 20 seconds just with the ferocity of his howl, and he won’t even take much damage when he stands in the fire.

This is a rogue:

Rogues are evil.  They have names like Judis and Jail.  They’re rotting, shambling wrecks with no regard for decency or honesty.  They steal things, including loot from your feral friends!  When they stand in the fire, they burn because they’re dried up old bony things, or occasionally metrosexual elves, really confused orcs or trolls that are too stoned to pick up a bow.

If those images don’t convince you, I’m afraid for your priorities.  I do have one more trick up my sleeve; an appeal to self-interest.  Many of you have offspecs, and many of those offspecs involve bears or cats.

Look at the relationship between the number of rogues alive and the chances that you’ll get your hands on that sweet sweet dps leather:

You do want a Deathbringer’s Will, don’t you?

Finally, I’ll make an appeal to authority.  Our guild’s resident feral druid had this to say:

Thus, it is better to heal hunter pets than rogues.

I deliberately left the e-cred uncapitalized, because all that e-shit is lowercase for reasons I don’t fully understand.

My raid leader made this thoughtful post about the fact that there’s now a zone-wide buff in ICC, and how she’s conflicted over the idea that using it would somehow cheapen our accomplishments there.  She has opened this issue up to discussion within our guild, and so far it’s mostly sensible people.  There are, however, a few folks that I won’t name who firmly believe that we should not use this buff.

I am always one for constructive discussion, and I respect everyone’s viewpoint, even when they are so obviously objectively wrong as to boggle the mind.

I keep reading these things about how a zone-wide buff is an “artificial advantage” that makes players who are otherwise unable to kill things succeed.  This holds water for about 30 seconds until you realize that all of the gear that people have obtained in the past weeks of raiding ICC are doing exactly the same fucking thing.

MMOs always have a direct correlation between time invested and relative player power.  This is exactly what this buff is doing.  It’s no different than getting the Bow of Masculinity +2 or the Sword of Heaving Bosoms.

I understand that people are making an arbitrary distinction between obtaining gear (time spent, in theory, succeeding) vs. a timed buff (time spent doing pretty much anything) but since it’s an arbitrary distinction, I am free to disagree.  If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.  Use your new gear and the buff, or stop acquiring new shit as of right fucking now and man’s game it up through the Lich King in your current gear.

This is the part in a blog where people normally ask what you think about the given hotbutton issue in an effort to drive comments, but I’ve gotta say that if you don’t see those two things as one and the same, you’re just wrong.  Also, I’m an unreasonable stubborn jerk.

12 Stones isn’t metal.  The lead singer did a duet with the chick from Evanescence for fuck’s sake.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m happy that you have grindcore.  I am just a little confused that Nickelback-with-tattoos is in the same category as Dying Fetus.

Icecrown Citadel is full of complex fights requiring elaborate strategies and flawless execution.

I have spent many long hours honing my skillful approach to these fights, and now wish to share the accumulated wisdom of the Monolith Misdirect Club with all and sundry.  In defiance of our strict rule on not releasing strategies for cutting edge content, I will now share the secret plans we have used to conquer our foes.

Entryway Trash

The first set of foes we shall face are fairly straightforward.  There are a few tricks to keep in mind, but nothing very challenging.  First, the packs of skeleton monsters called “The Damned” must be AE’d down.  It is very important that these die simultaneously.  If there is too much time between deaths, the melee might survive.  Secondly, the “Servant of the Throne” mobs should be pointed towards casters and healers.  If they are tanked away from the raid, the frost blast spell will be wasted.

Marrowgar

This is the first true challenge on the way to the Lich King.  It is very important that the ranged spread out as far away from each other as possible for the spike phase.  Apart from that, there are relatively few tricks to this fight.  Chase him during the whirlwind phase, and if you have a reliable timer, make sure you misdirect a rogue right before the whirlwind ends to maximize the effects of their ToT.  If no rogues are available, a mage will suffice.

Lady Deathwhisper

Another straightforward fight.  Her neon green DnD does minimal damage, and viper sting has reduced returns when used against her mana shield.  The ghosts are also pretty minimal damage, and may be ignored.  Autofollow whichever add tank you like so it looks like you’re making a contribution.  Loot the bow or the legs when she’s dead.

Elevator Boss

Wait for the idiots to get res’d.  If you’re dead, blame lag.

Elevator Trash

Use only autoshot here to conserve mana.  You’ll thank me later.

Gunship Event

If they put you in a cannon, figure out what you did to piss off your raid leader, and don’t do it anymore.  Volley the portal when it shows up if you feel like it, or just put your pet on aggressive and AFK.

Saurfang

The storyline here is moving.  This is quite possibly the most painful thing a father could ever have to do.  You should empathize with Saurfang the Elder.  You should recognize the incredible sacrifice involved here.  Then, once the roleplay talk stuff is done, you should turn off the TV for the rest of the fight.  Conventional wisdom tells you to kill the adds here, but that’s a sucker’s bet.  Real men MD that to the local ret paladin and blame divine storm.  When he dies, make sure you get the trinket before the rogues.

At this point you’ve bested the first level of defense, and are ready to kill retarded fart jokes and homoerotic blood elves.  We’ll cover that another time, but here’s a quick sneak peak: the white fog is a trick.  Run through it; it doesn’t hurt.

My baby shaman hit 80 last weekend.

I leveled him primarily as enhance, and he had the heirloom things so that I didn’t even have to bother really gearing up as I went.

If you look carefully at his armory, you’ll see that he doesn’t even have the Argent rep unlocked.  I hit 80 most of the way through Dragonblight.  I went and got myself a resto spec, and I facerolled through LFD.  I did ToC 10 and Ony 25.  Less than a week later I have gear that means I don’t need to do anything except earth shield and riptide to heal most heroics.  I even got 2pc t9 and 232 weapons for an offspec that I abandoned almost immediately.  I had to work for a pretty long time to get gear even remotely comparable on my tree.

I appreciate that Blizard is making an effort to remove gear as a barrier of entry for new content, but it’s turning people like me into monsters.  I am absolutely hooked on the idea of random pugs, and almost instantly bored when I join them.  As a result, my poor groupmates are subjected to a healer alternating between bouncing around and autofollowing the tank.  It’s even worse when I play my DK; I just run around grabbing stuff and dragging it with me until the DPS kill it.  We won’t even begin to talk about the things that happen when I am on my hunter.

This is all well and good when everyone else in the group takes the same meat-grinder approach to randoms.  On the off chance that I get a relatively new tank, I can only imagine the poor guy’s dismay.  Just imagine this – you’re doing your first set of heroics, and your healer won’t sit still.  He’s running around and playing chicken with your HP.  He’s pulling the next pack while you’re still tanking, and I’m not sure he’s wearing pants.

Dear new-ish tank: I’m sorry.  It’s nothing personal, I’m just trying to bring some fun back to content that I outgeared too fast.