Theramore’s Fall and Dufit

So, I took a chance. Dufit does pvp, not a dungeon runner. He que’d for the Theramore Fall scenario when it first opened up. Eight minute wait for group, no real clue what he was supposed to do. Suffice it to say, things could have gone better for him.

Although Duf managed not to die during the run, he did run low on mana often. He had trouble keeping up with the rogue leader. “fast”, falls short of description here. Dufit’s two team mates where from another server, and obviously had que’d together. Should’nt have mattered, but it did. There was no talk. No “cover me”, no “do this or that”, no nothing.

No mistake here, and no QQ. Dufit was ill-prepared. Chasing after and trying to keep up, he managed to fall off the docks not once, but three times. Can he spell “noob?” lol. There was one minor exception to the no talk stuff. At one point someone said stand in the gray circles and you’ll be invisible. Dufit followed the healer in what appeared to be a gray, large, circle. The healer ran dead into 6 Theramore Marines, and the fight for survival was on. Fortunately, we survived.

Overall, it was quite the experience. I did’nt really like the event taking up so much screen space near my bars with the “stage announcements” and such. And I really should have been better prepared. I guess the excitement overcame better judgement 🙂

Um? Dufit’s box was empty.

Alliance gets a pet, Horde gets a bomb toy.

I gather the scenario is suppossed to take about 15 minutes to run. Dufit’s group took about 30 minutes. So, I guess the run time is pretty much group dependant. I will offer up one piece of advice here though. Pre-group with people you know. Oh, and take a minute to read about the event first. LOL! Don’t be a Dufit.

somehow managed this, lol!

 

Tanking: Dungeon Two

Deadmines loading screen

“Prior to the First War, the Deadmines were the greatest gold-production center in human lands. It is said the Deadmines’ gold deposits once accounted for a third of Stormwind’s treasure reserves. However…” ~from Wowpedia

Killona and Anesthetica qued up for Deadmines. Unlike our first attempt, there was no instant que for this tank/healer combo. We sat twideling our thumbs for almost seven minutes before getting zoned in.

The three dps were all from different servers, seems to be the norm for LFD. To our dismay though, two of the bosses were already down. Killona’s first thought: What the heck happened to the previous tank and healer? She soon decided that they must have dropped group. Several reasons became obvious as the rest of the run proceeded.

The dps crowd; a warrior, a hunter and a mage. As with their first dungeon attempt, Killona had difficulties with the warrior and hunter pulling aggro from the start of each fight, before she even reached the intended mob group. Are things so off, now that dps don’t understand that the tank needs to hit the group first?

At first, Killona attempted to pick up those mobs that ran past her, straight to the pulling dps. This became a fruitless task. She adopted the attitude: “fine. you pull, you’re on your own, hope you die.” To their benefit though, Anesthetica has a big heart and did’nt let them die. After finishing the main crowd, Killona would double back and pick up what she could. We finished the run with a few more aggravations, but no deaths.

Way back when it was first popular, I had the add-on Recount. Eventually, tired of it, and dumped it. About a month or so back, I installed it again. Mostly for personal referance with the new classes and specs I’m trying out. Last week I came across a couple of old blog posts floating around the internets. lol, I learned again not only how to read Recount, but how to read it from a tank’s perspective. It’s actually quite useful now. Maybe more on that another time.

As expected, Killona can out dps most any dps’er, including those with pets. Also, as expected, she does more damage. Unexpected though, Killona required considerably less healing than some dps. One example was the warrior. Third in dps rank, yet received the vast majority of heals. The mage; no real clue what (s)he was up to. Bringing up the rear I guess. And the hunter. Now, I do know a little bit about hunters, having a level capped PvP BM hunter who does venture into dungeons every so often. So let’s start here.

HUNTERS! Turn your pet’s “growl” ability off in dungeons. Do not send your pet with “charge” into the group ahead of the tank. Come on now hunters, we should all know these two simple things by now.

No, I’m not going into a rant now 🙂 Although, it really isn’t hard to pick up a few basics about playing your class and spec. It’s called: Google.

Okay then. At the end of it all there is a level 3 guild sitting around. Killona and Anesthetica (alts) are co-gm’s. The guild started out as just a place for us to keep all our alts, share materials, extra bank space and what-not. After talking it over with Anesthetica, I’ve decided to attempt recruiting lower level players into the guild in hopes of forming a steady dungeon group. People who can cooperate with each other, work as a team, and hopefully have some fun along the way. Nice people. If we’re ever going to get anywhere with doing dungeons, seems to me a steady guild group has considerably more advantages.

So, that’s about it for now. LOL!  “TIP: Take all things in moderation….”. Yep, I need to keep this in mind. :p

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. 😀