It felt like it took forever to get everything for the game installed and downloaded on Friday. The computer arrived shortly after noon, and when I posted around 3pm, I was partway through the second patch download. I still had to download 2.3 (another biggun), install BC, and get all my addons in the right place. It was about 6pm before I was finally logged in and playing again. It was totally worth the wait though. Even standing in the auction house in Silvermoon with my bank character was completely stunning.... the detail! I cranked all the video options up to give me maximum detail for the environment, the spells, everything. Wow. I couldn't believe how sharp everything looked. Sort of reminded me how in the old days, the cinematic at the beginning of the game would be incredible quality, but then the actual game play had very blocky graphics. Over the years, the games have looked more and more like the cinematic. Now, I'm finally playing the cinematic.
I took my mage out for a spin in Dustwallow Marsh, and ... again, it's hard to describe how breathtaking it all was. The weeds all over the ground, the shimmers on the surface of the water, the bricks on the road... and then when I started casting spells! Amazing! I almost died in the first battle because I was so distracted by all the new animations surrounding me. I can't believe how much I've been missing.
So far, it's consistently giving me 60 fps, with nary a dip. I think I saw it go down to 50 once, but that's not something I notice unless I'm looking at the number. When I'm leaving or arriving at a flight path, I can see all the animation. When the zeppelin carries me from spot to spot, there isn't a full minute delay where I know I've arrived at the destination, but just can't see it yet. It's immediate. When I walk into an instance, I only see that loading screen for a few moments. I don't have to sit there wondering whether I've disconnected again, hoping my party doesn't replace me... Ahhhh! It's all so much more relaxing, more predictable. I love it.
[/new computer joy]
So, we played quite a bit on Friday evening, and then almost all day on Saturday and Sunday. I did meet all my goals for the weekend...
I played my hunter just a little bit. She wasn't fully rested, but had enough double experience saved up to get me to 52 just grinding greens on my way to some quests. I killed my way through the trolls in Jintha'Alor to make my own Mallet of Zul'Farrak. Easy peasy. I then decided to wander west and try to kill the giant spider Shadra. Turns out she was a bit out of my league, so I ended up abandoning my poor cat and making a hasty retreat toward the exit. Will have to try that one again later. (It was an orange group quest, but hey, my pet and I are like a group, right?) I had one more Hinterlands quest on my list... to get the ancient egg from the cave behind the area where I'd just made the mallet. Doh! I really need to read these quests more carefully after I receive them. SO, I revisited those trolls and swiped the egg. *Yoink!*
I also got my mage to 40. I mostly killed stuff around Dustwallow Marsh, but did travel a bit to get stuff for the mage-specific quests from Tabetha there. I got to the last quest in the chain, which involved killing the Demon of the Orb that she summons in the little garden by her house. I got his hit points pretty low on the first try, but he killed me before I could finish him off. I retrieved by body, ran back, and tried a second time. Again, so close. The Demon and I basically flopped to the ground at precisely the same moment. Damn! Again, ran back to Tabetha's cottage, and when I went inside, there was a pair of 38ish level human mages starting the same quest. So, I waited while Tabetha walked out and summoned the Demon for them. I watched them slay the demon (and even fired a helpful frost bolt in there as he began smushing one of them... I know, they're humans, but... he's a big demon!). They killed him, and as they were turning in the quest, I peeked in my quest log to see what the reward was, and noted at this point that it said "group." Heh... But I had come so close twice by myself! So, I decided to try it one more time. When the humans were done, I had Tabetha summon the Demon again. The humans followed me out in the garden to watch the fight...
I secured him in place with my frost nova and then hurled frostbolts and fire blasts at him until he was no longer frozen. I had to take hits from him until the nova cooldown was over, but then recast it as soon as I could, ran backwards and bandaged myself briefly. I then repeated with the fireblast, frostbolts, and cone of cold until he was on me again. I drank a healing potion, and then finished him off with everything I had. I was down to about 20% of my hit points as he finally crumpled to the ground. It was so awesome.
The human mages stuck around for the whole the battle (no complementary frost bolts for me, but I didn't care, since it was pretty exciting to down this Demon myself), and they both cheered for me and saluted me with respect after the kill. Too cool. That was one of the highlights of my WoWeekend. Somewhere along the way back to town I hit level 40, and then went to buy a mount. She now has a nifty blue hawkstrider.
We took our priest/warrior duo into Blackfathom Deeps so that my priest could kill Lorgus Jett, and my husband could complete a few lingering quests he had there. We wouldn't get much experience (if any), but we thought it might be a fun challenge with just the two of us, and we'd get a bit of loot for disenchants, rep, etc. We actually did quite well. We made it all the way to Kelris without a wipe, and dropped him like a bag of dirt. Yay! So, it was time to light the four trays on the altar. I'd mentioned to my husband that we should only light one at a time (as he hadn't done this instance before), but he lit one, and when it seemed like nothing happened right away, he ran over and lit a second one. Ooops.... so, we wiped. It had taken us so long to get there, and knowing how close some of our earlier scrapes were, we weren't certain we'd be able to do it, so we just decided to call it a night. My husband is very anxious to get a character to 40, so we may not pair again with these two until we've both leveled a bit. His warrior is at 37, my priest at 36.
Our paladin/shaman duo will continue to bulldoze the opposition, however. We did Ragefire Chasm together, just the two of us, since we were both significantly above the level range. It was so much fun that we decided to try running the whole of Wailing Caverns, just the two of us. I'd heard that folks can pretty much solo WC at level 30, so we thought there was a good chance we could do it as a pair of 24s, each with healing and resurrection capabilities. Turns out we were right -- we did very well. We approached each pull very carefully, and our deliberation paid off. We wiped only once, and it was when we weren't paying attention and got hit with a few patrols during a battle where we were taking on three at once already. We both decided to bail from the battle, hoping one of us could get away and resurrect the other, but my husband unfortunately took a wrong turn right into another patrolling slimy thing, and I, instead of jumping over the side into a clear area, took the ramp down instead and got killed. Doh!
Aside from that, we kicked butt. We killed all the bosses, collected all four of the gems for Leaders of the Fang, and then did the final event. I mentally prepared myself for the idea that we would not be successful in killing all the waves of monsters that emerged from the water around us, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy. Nooo problem.
While it was perhaps not the best use of our time (it took a very long time, and yielded very little experience, though we did both level to 25 upon turning in the quests), it was really very much fun. I loved the excitement of wondering whether we'd actually survive some of the fights -- some of it was easy, but some of it was quite challenging. This is what I love about running instances. I don't care so much about the loot or the lore. I enjoy working out the strategy for each pull, given the particular resources of the team, and trying to execute the plan.
Showing posts with label priest progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label priest progress. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
State of the Main (and Alts!)
I managed to play quite a lot this weekend...
My hunter has hit 50! I finished off most of the available Hinterlands quests with a rogue friend from the guild. We each had a bunch of group quests we intended to pair up for, but then post-patch, many of them had the group label removed. We did them together anyway, and polished them off quite quickly. I've now wandered to Feralas where there are green quests galore, and I'm leveling up my leatherworking a bit. My friend and I will head into Zul'Farrak tonight.
I also played my mage a fair amount this weekend, and used up all the lovely double experience I'd accrued during her long rest. She completed Scarlet Monastery (with another frightening pug, but at this point, I think I'll spare you the tale), and most of Razorfen Downs. Still need to finish up the quests outside that instance.
My priest is 34ish, I think. Didn't play her much this weekend, but leveled up her tailoring such that she can now make stuff she can't wear yet. That's when I know it's time to slowly back away from the auction house... *cautiously steps back* No really, I had tons of silk on other characters, and together, they contributed toward the let's-move-on-to-mageweave-tailoring fund.
My paladin is at 20. Our paladin/shaman duo wreaked havoc on the harpies in the Barrens on Friday night. Steamrolled them! Bwahahaha, etc. We've yet to meet our match.
Onward!
My hunter has hit 50! I finished off most of the available Hinterlands quests with a rogue friend from the guild. We each had a bunch of group quests we intended to pair up for, but then post-patch, many of them had the group label removed. We did them together anyway, and polished them off quite quickly. I've now wandered to Feralas where there are green quests galore, and I'm leveling up my leatherworking a bit. My friend and I will head into Zul'Farrak tonight.
I also played my mage a fair amount this weekend, and used up all the lovely double experience I'd accrued during her long rest. She completed Scarlet Monastery (with another frightening pug, but at this point, I think I'll spare you the tale), and most of Razorfen Downs. Still need to finish up the quests outside that instance.
My priest is 34ish, I think. Didn't play her much this weekend, but leveled up her tailoring such that she can now make stuff she can't wear yet. That's when I know it's time to slowly back away from the auction house... *cautiously steps back* No really, I had tons of silk on other characters, and together, they contributed toward the let's-move-on-to-mageweave-tailoring fund.
My paladin is at 20. Our paladin/shaman duo wreaked havoc on the harpies in the Barrens on Friday night. Steamrolled them! Bwahahaha, etc. We've yet to meet our match.
Onward!
Monday, October 29, 2007
WoWeekend
I had one of those glorious weekends that didn't require that I go to work, so I essentially did nothing but play WoW. I mostly played my priest (who is now at 30), hunter (now at 44), and our paladin/shaman duo has shuffled along to The Barrens, now in the early teens.
Early on Saturday, I started looking for a BFD group for my priest. I was available on the LFG list for most of the morning while I popped around, questing in Ashenvale and Thousand Needles, and finally got a note from someone just after lunchtime. It was a name I sort of recognized, but he wasn't on my list of people to avoid, so I joined his group. Long story short, is paladin is on the list now. He screamed at people the entire time in all caps, calling them idiots and so forth. To be fair, we did have at least one person in the group who didn't know what they were doing. It was a hunter (I think people use the term "huntard" too liberally, but I think that in this case, it may have applied). Her pet ran all over the place, attacking things willy nilly. Instead of screaming, I asked her nicely to please turn off growl, put her pet on passive, etc, etc, etc, but she never responded in any way (not a verbal acknowledgment of the request even). When we got to the bit where we all had to jump across the platforms in the water, she did so without dismissing her pet, and so the cat ran all the way around, bringing a trail of murlocs behind it. Greaaaat. After this, one guy left the group, and I really wanted to leave, but it had taken so long to get a group together, I was determined to stay on.
We got a fifth person to join, and so the jerky paladin ordered me to come help him summon them and ordered everyone else to stay put. The hunter, of course, followed. Again, a rollicking all caps berating, but it did not deter the hunter. So, he told me to stay behind since this hunter was so insistent upon coming with him. Soooo... hunter got yelled at for the entire run back to the stone. The person they were going to summon must have taken this as a warning sign and dropped out of the group, as did the other guy who was waiting in the instance with me. So, I dropped out of the group and decided to try for another later on. (Oh, and why I recognized the name in the first place -- turns out he'd hassled my husband before about joining his group for an instance, though my husband declined and was spared the experience I had just had.)
An hour or so later (after this paladin had logged off), I put myself on the lists for SFK and BFD. I got a bite for SFK first, and it was easily the highlight of my weekend (pug-wise). I was a mid-instance replacement and I was the second priest in the party. They asked what my spec was, and I said shadow, but that I'd mostly been healing in instances so far. I said I'd be fine with either role. The other priest was lower level, and she suggested that she heal since I could deal out a lot more damage. "You'll probably end up tanking, too," joked the rogue in the party. Heh... anyway, it was a total blast playing in a group as a shadow priest, and I'm actually questioning now whether I'll respec her to holy later. Still plenty of time to decide...
After that lovely group finished, someone asked if anyone would like to stay on for BFD. (Hey, sounds like a story I told before!). I agreed to stay on, since BFD was the instance I'd hoped to do in the first place. Again, one person had to leave, so I crossed my fingers for an equally nice/competent replacement. While we were waiting at the summoning stone by BFD for folks to finish their training and repairs, one of the other remaining people left and were immediately replaced by another person from the rogue's guild. I wondered why they weren't added as a fifth. It came out shortly after that this new person was the one I'd replaced in SFK. Huh. And then, a level 70 joined the group. Grr...
I fired a quick message to the group leader, the rogue, saying, "Oh, so we're getting a walkthrough?"
"Yeah!" she said. "[Her Guild]is so AWESOME." Um, perhaps. What is not awesome is not asking everyone in the group if this is how they'd like to proceed. I actually like to play through instances. I want the experience points, I want the practice. But, I decided not to be a baby about it. I'd just do a real run later. (When you turn in one of the quests, they ask you to go back in again anyway, so, no big deal.)
Somehow, even though we had a full group now, it was taking forever for us to get started. The rogue was waiting for her dad to call her (for "just two minutes"), and so we were left to sit by the stone watching the new arrival (level 25 or so) duel the level 70. It was funny for about the first 10 minutes, and then I just started to get bored. Again, knowing that the instance itself would be quick, I tried to control my impatience. We finally got going and the level 70 totally blew the doors off the place.
Seemed unlikely I'd be able to get another BFD group together right away, and my priest had gotten to the point where all her regular quests were group quests, or quests she wasn't strong enough to complete alone (yellow quests can be tough when you're squishy), so I set her aside to play my hunter a bit.
The first thing my hunter did was trick-or-treat and get turned into a frog. I hopped my little froggy body out of the inn in Grom'gol and ran to the mailbox. As I passed by the bonfire, someone cast a buff on me and my giant cat, who was running behind me. They said the sight of the two of us cracked them up, that it was the funniest thing they'd seen all day. I said I was just grateful that my cat still recognized me...
I'm still a bit nervous about doing instances with my hunter, because I'm still not comfortable doing much beyond letting my pet tank for me. I know how to let the cat hold aggro and so forth, but I haven't played around much with traps or anything like that. BRK's videos have been eye opening. It's clear that there's a lot more to being a hunter than siccing my pet on a mob, waiting a few seconds, and shooting at it.
But anyway, I did run Scarlet Monastery (Cathedral) with my hunter, and everything went fine. (Well, except that everyone else in the pug thought it was fine for people to roll greed on BoP items, even if they couldn't use them. I can't wait until I get to a point where I can run more instances with my guildmates...)
Early on Saturday, I started looking for a BFD group for my priest. I was available on the LFG list for most of the morning while I popped around, questing in Ashenvale and Thousand Needles, and finally got a note from someone just after lunchtime. It was a name I sort of recognized, but he wasn't on my list of people to avoid, so I joined his group. Long story short, is paladin is on the list now. He screamed at people the entire time in all caps, calling them idiots and so forth. To be fair, we did have at least one person in the group who didn't know what they were doing. It was a hunter (I think people use the term "huntard" too liberally, but I think that in this case, it may have applied). Her pet ran all over the place, attacking things willy nilly. Instead of screaming, I asked her nicely to please turn off growl, put her pet on passive, etc, etc, etc, but she never responded in any way (not a verbal acknowledgment of the request even). When we got to the bit where we all had to jump across the platforms in the water, she did so without dismissing her pet, and so the cat ran all the way around, bringing a trail of murlocs behind it. Greaaaat. After this, one guy left the group, and I really wanted to leave, but it had taken so long to get a group together, I was determined to stay on.
We got a fifth person to join, and so the jerky paladin ordered me to come help him summon them and ordered everyone else to stay put. The hunter, of course, followed. Again, a rollicking all caps berating, but it did not deter the hunter. So, he told me to stay behind since this hunter was so insistent upon coming with him. Soooo... hunter got yelled at for the entire run back to the stone. The person they were going to summon must have taken this as a warning sign and dropped out of the group, as did the other guy who was waiting in the instance with me. So, I dropped out of the group and decided to try for another later on. (Oh, and why I recognized the name in the first place -- turns out he'd hassled my husband before about joining his group for an instance, though my husband declined and was spared the experience I had just had.)
An hour or so later (after this paladin had logged off), I put myself on the lists for SFK and BFD. I got a bite for SFK first, and it was easily the highlight of my weekend (pug-wise). I was a mid-instance replacement and I was the second priest in the party. They asked what my spec was, and I said shadow, but that I'd mostly been healing in instances so far. I said I'd be fine with either role. The other priest was lower level, and she suggested that she heal since I could deal out a lot more damage. "You'll probably end up tanking, too," joked the rogue in the party. Heh... anyway, it was a total blast playing in a group as a shadow priest, and I'm actually questioning now whether I'll respec her to holy later. Still plenty of time to decide...
After that lovely group finished, someone asked if anyone would like to stay on for BFD. (Hey, sounds like a story I told before!). I agreed to stay on, since BFD was the instance I'd hoped to do in the first place. Again, one person had to leave, so I crossed my fingers for an equally nice/competent replacement. While we were waiting at the summoning stone by BFD for folks to finish their training and repairs, one of the other remaining people left and were immediately replaced by another person from the rogue's guild. I wondered why they weren't added as a fifth. It came out shortly after that this new person was the one I'd replaced in SFK. Huh. And then, a level 70 joined the group. Grr...
I fired a quick message to the group leader, the rogue, saying, "Oh, so we're getting a walkthrough?"
"Yeah!" she said. "[Her Guild]
Somehow, even though we had a full group now, it was taking forever for us to get started. The rogue was waiting for her dad to call her (for "just two minutes"), and so we were left to sit by the stone watching the new arrival (level 25 or so) duel the level 70. It was funny for about the first 10 minutes, and then I just started to get bored. Again, knowing that the instance itself would be quick, I tried to control my impatience. We finally got going and the level 70 totally blew the doors off the place.
The first thing my hunter did was trick-or-treat and get turned into a frog. I hopped my little froggy body out of the inn in Grom'gol and ran to the mailbox. As I passed by the bonfire, someone cast a buff on me and my giant cat, who was running behind me. They said the sight of the two of us cracked them up, that it was the funniest thing they'd seen all day. I said I was just grateful that my cat still recognized me...
I'm still a bit nervous about doing instances with my hunter, because I'm still not comfortable doing much beyond letting my pet tank for me. I know how to let the cat hold aggro and so forth, but I haven't played around much with traps or anything like that. BRK's videos have been eye opening. It's clear that there's a lot more to being a hunter than siccing my pet on a mob, waiting a few seconds, and shooting at it.
But anyway, I did run Scarlet Monastery (Cathedral) with my hunter, and everything went fine. (Well, except that everyone else in the pug thought it was fine for people to roll greed on BoP items, even if they couldn't use them. I can't wait until I get to a point where I can run more instances with my guildmates...)
Monday, October 22, 2007
re·pug·nant
(from m-w.com)
1. incompatible, inconsistent
2. archaic: hostile
3. exciting distaste or aversion
---
I decided to spend some time leveling my li'l priesty this weekend in an effort to catch up with my husband's warrior toon, which is in the early 30s. I think she was 24ish on Friday night when I logged on. I decided to knock off a couple Stonetalon quests, hassle the Venture Company, and collect cloth to level up my tailoring.
Within an hour, I had a random invite to Shadowfang Keep. I decided to take advantage of it, since it seems like whenever I have time to run an instance, I can't find a group. (And then when I don't have time, I get a million invites.) I joined the group and seeing that there was only one person even on the same continent as the instance, I started making my way there so that I could help summon folks.
The group was composed of a warrior (tank), a mage, a druid, and a shaman. (Note, some classes have been changed to protect the innocent.) The mage was the first at the summoning stone, and she (alone) was trying to summon all of us. We explained several times that she would need to wait for one of us to come help her, that it required two to summon. Then, moments later, she'd say, "it not working." Yes, yes, so we'd explain again. Moments later: "im cliking." (Where is that goddamned zeppelin.)
During all this, the druid kept saying, "u want me go get shaman?" Uh, no. Druid is fine. "i have shaman." Ok, thanks, for the info. At this point, the mage started to doubt herself, I guess, and asked if we really needed a mage. I told her that there were some nasty curses laid down in SFK, so it would be very handy to have a mage to remove them. "me get shaman?" At this point, I noted that if you just imagined the chatspeak with a Cookie Monster voice, it wasn't so painful to read. Made it funny, in fact. Anyway, I guess he must have been lured away by some cookies, because he left the group before I made it to the summoning stone. No great loss, I think. A paladin took his place.
I finally got to the stone and we got everybody summoned. At this point, there was some kind of scuffle/duel with someone else by the stone. I wasn't really paying much attention, as I was trying to get everybody buffed. The tank's personality started coming out in full force at this point. Apparently he'd dueled the guy and talked some smack, and there were a lot of censored %^&! types of things coming up on my screen. I tried to ignore the situation and focus on getting ready to go in. I asked the mage if she could conjure some water for me and the other mana users. She said not until the tank apologized to her friend, the one the tank had just dueled. Uh, ok. So, we waited. "Dude," was all the tank said. I waited a moment and again, politely, asked for some water. The mage just stood there. The tank ran ahead into the instance. Oh-kay. Mana conservation mode.
We entered SFK, and the paladin let us know that he might not be able to stay for the whole thing, and asked if this was ok. We all said fine. The tank asked what we all thought of him drawing all the aggro and killing everything for us. Well, have at it.
Things actually went pretty smoothly for the first part of the instance. Aside from a few "line of sight" issues, I was able to keep everyone healed, no problem, and even toss out some shadow words. I don't think the tank liked what the mage was doing, because he kept telling me not to heal her. Whatever. I wasn't having to heal her at the expense of anyone else in the party, so I ignored him. He also yelled at the paladin to stop doing some particular attack (I can't remember what it was). The paladin asked why, and the tank said, "it draws aggro." The paladin pointed out that the tank was still drawing way, way more aggro and not having trouble holding it. "i know lol," said the tank. Gah. He then whispered to me with a lot of winking emoticons and asked if he was "easy to heal," and was I enjoying myself. Well, at least we were moving along pretty well.
At one point, the mage said she needed to leave for about 20 minutes, so we left her behind, and had surprisingly little problem killing stuff. Then, the paladin had to leave, so I suggested the three of us wait for the mage for few minutes, buff up, and so forth. As soon as I got everybody buffed and sat down to drink some melon juice, all hell broke loose. We got jumped by a patrol and someone must have drawn a few mobs around the corner from where we were standing, because suddenly there were four mobs attacking the party. It was at this point that the mage rejoined us, and I can only imagine the chaos she saw when she walked in the door. With no mana to protect myself or anyone else we all got totally smushed within about a minute. Wipe #1. This was actually the first wipe during an instance on my watch as healer, and I didn't take it as hard as I thought I might. We did get jumped, I didn't have mana, we didn't have the full party... I'm not sure there's anything I could have done differently. Folks seemed to take it pretty well, too. I still apologized, and people kind of chuckled over it. Whew!
Ok, so after all the body retrieval and resurrecting, we continued. I noticed that the battles felt a lot tougher with the paladin gone, and I was running out of mana for healing a lot more quickly. I stopped casting anything other than healing spells, just to be safe. I also noticed that we were dealing with a lot more curses from the mobs. Earlier in the instance, when we were all stopped, someone asked the mage to remove a curse, and after several requests (over several minutes), she did it, so I knew she was capable of it. When I ran SFK with my mage, I remember entire battles that I spent removing curses from the group, so I recommended that she just keep an eye on the party icons, looking for the purple halos around our pictures. It was clear this mage was not paying attention because we all walked around with five minute curses on our heads all the way up to the final boss. I thought, well, maybe she's distracted because she's trying to do damage, so I kept an eye on her. No, she was not casting anything at all, it seemed. Hm... so, Arugal was going to be a three man job with a warrior, a shaman, and a priest. Great.
Before we tackled the final boss, I asked the mage several times if she could please remove the curses. Again, she just. Wasn't. Paying. Attention. She did nothing. "Guess not," said the tank, and ran up to kill Arugal. ARGGHHH. We all followed, because we basically had no choice. I ran up behind the group and missed a couple heals due to line of sight problems, and then the shaman got smushed. I kept the tank alive as long as I could, and then tabbed to Arugal to see how much damage we'd done. We hadn't even cut his hit points half way!! That plus the bursts of damage due to the curse, and we were pretty much doomed. Wipe #2.
We tried again, and I was hopeful we'd make more progress since we didn't have the curses on us, but this next attempt on Arugal went pretty much like the first. Shaman got squished and the tank alone simply could not do enough damage to him to kill him. Wipe #3.
"I think we're going to need some help," the shaman said. I agreed, and the tank said he needed to go afk a bit, but would be back when we found a fifth. He promoted me to leader, I kicked the absent paladin and started looking for someone on the LFG channel. I also chatted with the mage a bit. She said she was having trouble getting close enough to Arugal to hit him with her frost spells. I questioned her a bit about this, because it seems like you could shoot a frostbolt at him (I've fired many a frostbolt at him with my own mage in that same little room). "He keeps moving," she said. Oh no. So, did she not know how to select a mob and cast a spell on it? Now I was thoroughly convinced that she had not done any damage to any mob during the entire instance. No wonder we'd had so much trouble. "Every time I get close to him, he moves." Ughhhh.
There was a hunter waiting in the LFG, so I invited him to the group. He was available immediately, so we summoned him, and he joined us. Some of the mobs at the beginning of the instance had respawned, so we killed them while we were waiting for the tank to come back. I promoted the tank to leader again, and off we went. (After the first battle, the tank said, "oh man, my arms are messed up because of all the weights I just lifted." Heh... yeah, sure thing, buddy.) We got to Arugal and completely destroyed him. He dropped the [Robes of Arugal], which, of course, bind on pickup. The tank passed, the shaman passed, the hunter rolled greed (!!!!!), and the mage rolled need. The shaman said to me, "If you would like that item, please roll need." So I did, and I won the roll. Hot damn.
Getting those robes (and knocking off the quests) made the whole thing worth it, but that was one annoying pug. The tank was a bit of a jerk, the mage didn't know how to play her class (or so it seemed to me), and although the shaman seemed to know what he was doing, it just wasn't enough for us to complete the instance.
I'm sure it won't be the last pug I complain about, and it's certainly not the first that's had me yelling at my monitor. (It would be best if I never picked up a mic, I think.) At times, we were incompatible, inconsistent, hostile, and there were definitely moments where I felt aversion to some of my party. Even so, I confess it made for an entertaining evening.
So, my priest is now at 27. She'll soon be caught up to my mage...
1. incompatible, inconsistent
2. archaic: hostile
3. exciting distaste or aversion
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I decided to spend some time leveling my li'l priesty this weekend in an effort to catch up with my husband's warrior toon, which is in the early 30s. I think she was 24ish on Friday night when I logged on. I decided to knock off a couple Stonetalon quests, hassle the Venture Company, and collect cloth to level up my tailoring.
Within an hour, I had a random invite to Shadowfang Keep. I decided to take advantage of it, since it seems like whenever I have time to run an instance, I can't find a group. (And then when I don't have time, I get a million invites.) I joined the group and seeing that there was only one person even on the same continent as the instance, I started making my way there so that I could help summon folks.
The group was composed of a warrior (tank), a mage, a druid, and a shaman. (Note, some classes have been changed to protect the innocent.) The mage was the first at the summoning stone, and she (alone) was trying to summon all of us. We explained several times that she would need to wait for one of us to come help her, that it required two to summon. Then, moments later, she'd say, "it not working." Yes, yes, so we'd explain again. Moments later: "im cliking." (Where is that goddamned zeppelin.)
During all this, the druid kept saying, "u want me go get shaman?" Uh, no. Druid is fine. "i have shaman." Ok, thanks, for the info. At this point, the mage started to doubt herself, I guess, and asked if we really needed a mage. I told her that there were some nasty curses laid down in SFK, so it would be very handy to have a mage to remove them. "me get shaman?" At this point, I noted that if you just imagined the chatspeak with a Cookie Monster voice, it wasn't so painful to read. Made it funny, in fact. Anyway, I guess he must have been lured away by some cookies, because he left the group before I made it to the summoning stone. No great loss, I think. A paladin took his place.
I finally got to the stone and we got everybody summoned. At this point, there was some kind of scuffle/duel with someone else by the stone. I wasn't really paying much attention, as I was trying to get everybody buffed. The tank's personality started coming out in full force at this point. Apparently he'd dueled the guy and talked some smack, and there were a lot of censored %^&! types of things coming up on my screen. I tried to ignore the situation and focus on getting ready to go in. I asked the mage if she could conjure some water for me and the other mana users. She said not until the tank apologized to her friend, the one the tank had just dueled. Uh, ok. So, we waited. "Dude," was all the tank said. I waited a moment and again, politely, asked for some water. The mage just stood there. The tank ran ahead into the instance. Oh-kay. Mana conservation mode.
We entered SFK, and the paladin let us know that he might not be able to stay for the whole thing, and asked if this was ok. We all said fine. The tank asked what we all thought of him drawing all the aggro and killing everything for us. Well, have at it.
Things actually went pretty smoothly for the first part of the instance. Aside from a few "line of sight" issues, I was able to keep everyone healed, no problem, and even toss out some shadow words. I don't think the tank liked what the mage was doing, because he kept telling me not to heal her. Whatever. I wasn't having to heal her at the expense of anyone else in the party, so I ignored him. He also yelled at the paladin to stop doing some particular attack (I can't remember what it was). The paladin asked why, and the tank said, "it draws aggro." The paladin pointed out that the tank was still drawing way, way more aggro and not having trouble holding it. "i know lol," said the tank. Gah. He then whispered to me with a lot of winking emoticons and asked if he was "easy to heal," and was I enjoying myself. Well, at least we were moving along pretty well.
At one point, the mage said she needed to leave for about 20 minutes, so we left her behind, and had surprisingly little problem killing stuff. Then, the paladin had to leave, so I suggested the three of us wait for the mage for few minutes, buff up, and so forth. As soon as I got everybody buffed and sat down to drink some melon juice, all hell broke loose. We got jumped by a patrol and someone must have drawn a few mobs around the corner from where we were standing, because suddenly there were four mobs attacking the party. It was at this point that the mage rejoined us, and I can only imagine the chaos she saw when she walked in the door. With no mana to protect myself or anyone else we all got totally smushed within about a minute. Wipe #1. This was actually the first wipe during an instance on my watch as healer, and I didn't take it as hard as I thought I might. We did get jumped, I didn't have mana, we didn't have the full party... I'm not sure there's anything I could have done differently. Folks seemed to take it pretty well, too. I still apologized, and people kind of chuckled over it. Whew!
Ok, so after all the body retrieval and resurrecting, we continued. I noticed that the battles felt a lot tougher with the paladin gone, and I was running out of mana for healing a lot more quickly. I stopped casting anything other than healing spells, just to be safe. I also noticed that we were dealing with a lot more curses from the mobs. Earlier in the instance, when we were all stopped, someone asked the mage to remove a curse, and after several requests (over several minutes), she did it, so I knew she was capable of it. When I ran SFK with my mage, I remember entire battles that I spent removing curses from the group, so I recommended that she just keep an eye on the party icons, looking for the purple halos around our pictures. It was clear this mage was not paying attention because we all walked around with five minute curses on our heads all the way up to the final boss. I thought, well, maybe she's distracted because she's trying to do damage, so I kept an eye on her. No, she was not casting anything at all, it seemed. Hm... so, Arugal was going to be a three man job with a warrior, a shaman, and a priest. Great.
Before we tackled the final boss, I asked the mage several times if she could please remove the curses. Again, she just. Wasn't. Paying. Attention. She did nothing. "Guess not," said the tank, and ran up to kill Arugal. ARGGHHH. We all followed, because we basically had no choice. I ran up behind the group and missed a couple heals due to line of sight problems, and then the shaman got smushed. I kept the tank alive as long as I could, and then tabbed to Arugal to see how much damage we'd done. We hadn't even cut his hit points half way!! That plus the bursts of damage due to the curse, and we were pretty much doomed. Wipe #2.
We tried again, and I was hopeful we'd make more progress since we didn't have the curses on us, but this next attempt on Arugal went pretty much like the first. Shaman got squished and the tank alone simply could not do enough damage to him to kill him. Wipe #3.
"I think we're going to need some help," the shaman said. I agreed, and the tank said he needed to go afk a bit, but would be back when we found a fifth. He promoted me to leader, I kicked the absent paladin and started looking for someone on the LFG channel. I also chatted with the mage a bit. She said she was having trouble getting close enough to Arugal to hit him with her frost spells. I questioned her a bit about this, because it seems like you could shoot a frostbolt at him (I've fired many a frostbolt at him with my own mage in that same little room). "He keeps moving," she said. Oh no. So, did she not know how to select a mob and cast a spell on it? Now I was thoroughly convinced that she had not done any damage to any mob during the entire instance. No wonder we'd had so much trouble. "Every time I get close to him, he moves." Ughhhh.
There was a hunter waiting in the LFG, so I invited him to the group. He was available immediately, so we summoned him, and he joined us. Some of the mobs at the beginning of the instance had respawned, so we killed them while we were waiting for the tank to come back. I promoted the tank to leader again, and off we went. (After the first battle, the tank said, "oh man, my arms are messed up because of all the weights I just lifted." Heh... yeah, sure thing, buddy.) We got to Arugal and completely destroyed him. He dropped the [Robes of Arugal], which, of course, bind on pickup. The tank passed, the shaman passed, the hunter rolled greed (!!!!!), and the mage rolled need. The shaman said to me, "If you would like that item, please roll need." So I did, and I won the roll. Hot damn.
Getting those robes (and knocking off the quests) made the whole thing worth it, but that was one annoying pug. The tank was a bit of a jerk, the mage didn't know how to play her class (or so it seemed to me), and although the shaman seemed to know what he was doing, it just wasn't enough for us to complete the instance.
I'm sure it won't be the last pug I complain about, and it's certainly not the first that's had me yelling at my monitor. (It would be best if I never picked up a mic, I think.) At times, we were incompatible, inconsistent, hostile, and there were definitely moments where I felt aversion to some of my party. Even so, I confess it made for an entertaining evening.
So, my priest is now at 27. She'll soon be caught up to my mage...
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