A Day Late…

Aaarrrgg!

*sad face day* Circumstances are such that I’ll not be able to greet the Pandas on opening day. Hopefully, I’ll join them within the coming week.

85-WOOT!

On the good side of things. Thdoria actually blazed through her Cata zones and dinged 85 this past Sunday! She also managed to skill cap her alchemy and herbalism. That makes three of the Horde crew ready for Pandaria. Yay! We’ll be going in with Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Enchanting and Alchemy. lol, plenty of farming ahead.

Thdoria’s push to 85 had it’s moments of frustration. For the most part, I’ve been kinda-sorta favorable with Blizzards’ idea for cross realm populating. But the reality is, it’s really buggy. Broken quests, cut scenes and other minor headaches are common. It took Thdoria a couple of tries to make her Twilight Highlands entrance. She kept losing the fleet.

Yes! We’re on the way.

“Was it my deoderant?”

“Umm? They jumped ship?”

Other minor problems; trying to talk to someone next to you…error message: “player does not exist.” Inabilities to loot at times (item un-clickable). Small things I should say, just a tad annoying. Although, they seem to be occuring on a regular basis.

Account wide achievements, mounts and pets. Has some advantages, though I’m not overly fond of their inclusion into the game. Maybe they’ll grow on me in time?

On the back burners: working on some possible UI changes and a forth-coming post over them. May attempt one of those dps Pandas, slot available for one but will probably wait until the beginning rush is over. Very doubtful if I’ll take any of my old alliance characters to Pandaria. I’m pretty well set into Horde side now. And there’s a handful of other game related things that need attention. Hmmmm? Me thinks the plate is a bit full atm. 🙂

Happy Panda adventures to all!

Okay, one more. You’ve just got to love those friendly npc’s you’re helping out.

Yep, they just love Thdoria.

 

I’m a Tank???

Today was the, I repeat, THE big day for Killona. At level 15, she was ready to try tanking her first dungeon. Her healer friend was level 15 as well, and ready to go!

Killona, the new tank

We decided for both our sakes to specifically choose Ragefire Chasm. Said to be the easiest of dungeons to start learning on. lol, and we were both fresh learners. Please note now: that I’ll be writing from my new tanks’ viewpoint. I’m pretty sure Anesthetica (healer friend), will be posting about her experiences from her viewpoint.

I must apologize for not having any action screenshots this time around. We’ll just move on to the good, bad, and ugly of the Ragefire Chasm dungeon group.

Killona had spent the night before making sure she had everything ready, and was in the best gear possible. Armed with both outside research, and a late night visual reminder run by Aygaren, she was ready to do this.

She greeted her group with a friendly hello. While preparing to ask if there were any questions before the start, someone was already asking if we were going yet. Killona met her first “go-go-go” dps’er. Things kind of went downhill from there.

To name a few: a warlock decided their voidwalker should be pulling the next mob while Killona was taking a brief look at which group was best to pull first. Next, there was the hunter who though it would go quicker if he fired on the mob first. Then there was a rogue who chose to run ahead and sap away, for whatever reason. The only time that worked out to the good was when he actually sapped one of the lower boss types and we were able to clear everything out first. But that was only one time, out of perhaps 20 random saps.

BTW- after the first successful run, some folks wanted to do another run, and another, and….you get the point. We ended up doing a couple of random choices after that, but every-single-time, it was Ragefire Chasm to pop. We, (Anesthetica and I), went through an array of dps’ers.

Now, the self part of this post. That cry for HELP!  Just to help you out though, here’s a screenie of the numbers for all the runs combined. Remember though, recount runs the average totals. Not of these shown are single fights, or even single runs.

clicky to make bigger!

The “Help” part? If there are any experienced tanks who happen to be reading today….

1.)  How do you deal with dps’ers who think they should tank? One of the problems I had was picking up wayward mobs, trying to pull them back to me instead of pounceing on a dps. Mobs were splitting up in several directions.

2.)  Is there something better I could have done from the start to help ensure group cooperation?

3.)  At level 15, I noticed that some of the dps’ers were level 17’s. They easily pulled aggro off of me. My toolbox atm isn’t much, though I did try to utilize every bit of it attempting to keep the mobs on me. I failed in this aspect, holding aggro, and it bothers me. lol, only once was I able to taunt a mob back off of one of them!

4.) We had dps’ers from many different realms, none from our own. Would it have been better to attempt a trade chat call from our own server?

Okay, I’m sure I could go on second guessing myself over everything, but I’ll let your eyes rest for now. 🙂  I do have one overall great thing to mention though. For being brand new to healing, Anesthetica did one hell-of-a-good job! In spite of the many chaotic moments, she always had my back and managed to keep the wayward group alive as well. I really hope we can continue working/learning together.

So there you have it. I hope you didn’t feel like I was just ranting or QQ’ing. It wasn’t my intention at all. Feel free to comment away about anything. 😀

Got Tank?

Another Tuesday rolls in, and if you haven’t read the fine print, it’s a 10 hour maintenance call instead of the usual 8. Next Tuesday, the 28th., is the schedualed 5.0.something-or-another patch. I hope you’re at least taking a peek at your new and revised talent choices, coming to your neighborhood soon. 🙂

While wandering through MMO Champion this morning, I took some time to watch a fair number of videos about Mists. Really interesting and exciting stuffs coming our way. I saw one 5-man dungeon fight that got me to thinking over an area of the game I’ve pretty much neglected for uhmteen different reasons.

Most of you know that Aygaren wasn’t only my first real Horde character to play out to level cap, but also my first non-ranged caster. I love Ay to the end. He accomplished many different goals for myself as a player. He gave me the new ability to play a melee class to some success.

Where he failed though, (actually me, not him), was tanking dungeons. He just never got into it. It’s a thorn in my side, constantly reminding me of things I meant (want) to do, just never actually did. Ever since some time back in Vanilla, I’ve wanted to raise a raiding character. Now here we are on the verge of Mists, and it’s still not done. :s

That little dream though never died. With good intentions, I keep pushing my own self to do better. Back on another server (pvp), I did manage to get a BM hunter through battlegrounds, world pvp, and enter early arenas. Kind of ended at that point though. His 2’s record was a dreary 2 / 12. And one of those wins was a default no-show from the other team. lol  I guess they were afk at the moment. Anyway, my pvp adventures went fairly well.

Khrox, pvp BM hunter

The hunter did some dungeons in his pvp gear, to some success, albeit minor. So when I started this Horde crew, that PvE dungeon thorn-in-my-side started acting up again. I still have a distaste for pugging, the LFD tool and such. It’s probably been one of the main reasons Aygaren never got into tanking for a group. I can just imagine all the trash talk he’d receive for being so “noob-ish” at this point in the game.

Killona at level 14

Enter Killona. A fresh Blood Elf Paladin, now Protection specced. At the moment she is slightly over level 15, and of dungeon age. There may be a different outcome this time around. An internet/game friend has graciously made room in her stable of alts for a new healing priest, and we’re going to learn how to dungeon well as a tank/healer combo. At the least, we should’nt have to be concerned over long que times, lol.

So, perhaps I’ll finally learn to tank, and she’ll learn about healing dungeon groups. Sounds like a win/win deal to me! Anyway, more about Killona and her adventures as they come about.

Anyways, I figure I got until the 28th. to at least get the basics of tanking down before the talent changes hit. If you’ve got any hints or tips for a beginning noob-ish tank, or an aspiring healing priest, feel free to comment away!  LOL! I feel like Dumass. (if you’ve ever leveled through Silverpine to the opening of Hillsbrad, you’ll know whom I speak of !)  ” HI ! HALP! “