WoW - Musings & Discussion

[Rii]

There's another thread about WoW in here, but it's not actually about WoW, if you catch the distinction. If not, perhaps this'll help:

I ran Gnomer on Rii yesterday. I'm new to the tanking game and the Warrior class, so it was an interesting experience. The subtle psycho-social differences between playing a tank and any other role are beginning to make themselves felt even at this level. I notice that I'm naturally assuming the role of leader within the group, also that - although I'm very much enjoying myself - I'm less inclined to banter as I'm constantly watching out for the group, setting up pulls, and so on.

Mechanically I found for the first time that I was having to tab target during AoE pulls and lay on additional threat as the Mage in the group (using Blizzard and Arcane Explosion for the most part) was always right on the edge of my ability to hold additional mobs with Thunder Clap alone. I also used Sunder for the first time after I had difficulty holding aggro against the Mage on a couple bosses, I'd been hoping to avoid it until picking up Devastate at higher levels as this character has a surprisingly large number of keybinds already. Of course it would probably help if I had a better weapon, I'm hoping to pick up Crescent of Forlorn Spirits shortly. The only other mechanical issue I encountered was the sheer kludginess of Battle Stance > Charge > Thunder Clap > Defensive Stance on AoE pulls. I could really use a macro to tidy that up.

As for the run itself, we had to ditch a prima donna Hunter who thought that because he'd completed a quest in the dungeon that it didn't matter that others hadn't, other than that it was smooth sailing.

So, how was your WoW day?

 

[clint g]

Slow, very slowe lol. Im new to wow and I just can never bring myself to playing it. Its to the point where I usually just let my room mate play on my account

 

[Rii]

It's a very different experience at lower-levels these days then it was, say, back in 2005. Most players are at the level cap these days. The realm that Rii is on, Saurfang, is the newest Oceanic realm, and thus has a reasonable number of low-level players. Even there, though, it's not exactly a bustling marketplace. On an old, low-population server you'll be lucky to find more than a handful of other folks in each low-level zone. I don't mind it so much except when it comes to finding groups for dungeons.

 

[Teelie]

Gnomer is probably the worst dungeon you could've run. I'm in Naxx 10 right now (literally in the instance on Grob). Bored, bored, bored. Helping a few newer 80's get better gear. Snooze-fest for me now.

 

[Rii]

Gnomer is probably the worst dungeon you could've run.

I don't know, everyone hates on Gnomer but I never have much difficulty getting a group for it. I guess it's all the quests associated with the dungeon. It helps that they've nerfed those mine-laying dwarves too. It's not a bad place, although there's definitely an excess of trash. But then I'm one of those freaks who likes Sunken Temple.

I'm in Naxx 10 right now (literally in the instance on Grob). Bored, bored, bored. Helping a few newer 80's get better gear. Snooze-fest for me now.

This is why I never got into raiding, you end up doing shit you don't want or need to do.

 

[Teelie]

There are two reasons to do Gnomer; the achievement and the engineers who want the mechanical pets.

And raiding isn't bad. Up til recently it was fun, but I'm awanting to do some Ulduar raiding again.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Gnomer is useful if you are a non-gnome trying to get gnome rep for your chicken mount. Lots of quests from the gnomes in Gnomer.

Regarding server pop I started on a high pop oceanic server, Dath Ramar. My horde chars are on much lower pop US servers and whoa.. it's really different on low pop. The marketplace can be very frustrating if you're a collector of unusual items like myself. Lots of money to be made though, if you're canny.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

My WoW day has sucked. First I hearthed home to IF, and got a map read error, which turned out to corrupt almost all my WOW. Had to uninstall and reinstall (yay, 4 hours)

Then WOW started randomly resetting my computer. It SEEMS to be cleared up, but I dunno.

 

[Rii]

Gnomer is useful if you are a non-gnome trying to get gnome rep for your chicken mount. Lots of quests from the gnomes in Gnomer.

A Druid asked me how to get a Mechanostrider as a Night Elf a few minutes ago actually, I gave him a run-down of race restrictions and faction rep and such but didn't think to mention Gnomer. I think I managed to put him off the idea in any case.

Personally I love the Level 60 versions, but the Level 30 ones are a little plain.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Gnomer is useful if you are a non-gnome trying to get gnome rep for your chicken mount. Lots of quests from the gnomes in Gnomer.

A Druid asked me how to get a Mechanostrider as a Night Elf a few minutes ago actually, I gave him a run-down of race restrictions and faction rep and such but didn't think to mention Gnomer. I think I managed to put him off the idea in any case.

Personally I love the Level 60 versions, but the Level 30 ones are a little plain.

Of course there are no race restrictions now (yet another dumb nerf).

My gnome has an orb of deception and she rides her lvl 30 mechanostrider when she's turned into a Tauren. It looks particularly awesome that way

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

My WoW day has sucked. First I hearthed home to IF, and got a map read error, which turned out to corrupt almost all my WOW. Had to uninstall and reinstall (yay, 4 hours)

Then WOW started randomly resetting my computer. It SEEMS to be cleared up, but I dunno.

Have you tried running repair.exe in your WoW folder? I've had that clear up stuff quite well.

 

[Rob Hal]

Gnomer is probably the worst dungeon you could've run. I'm in Naxx 10 right now (literally in the instance on Grob). Bored, bored, bored. Helping a few newer 80's get better gear. Snooze-fest for me now.

Totally understand that. Naxx was great for about two months, then it just got ridiculously boring... last time I went into 10-man Naxx, I grabbed a book and just kept clicking on my Lifebloom hotkey through most fights...

And yeah... Gnomer... ewww....

 

[Rii]

My gnome has an orb of deception and she rides her lvl 30 mechanostrider when she's turned into a Tauren. It looks particularly awesome that way

Screenshot!

 

[Garrett]

My first time trying to tank on my warrior back in vanilla was in Gnomer, as well. I do like the instance more than most, but that first experience was pretty bad. I tend to like Sunken Temple, too, though that's more for the trolls.

I was never the leader type in game before making my paladin and tanking. It's funny how often I tended to be on auto-pilot during instance runs while dpsing on my mage. There were several instances I tended to get lost in since I guess I wasn't paying that much attention. Tanking, I learned the layouts and the pulls pretty quick, and am now the guy the auto pilot dps are following.

The comment about less banter is definitely true. I'm usually far too busy to chat, and when I do so it usually ends up slowing down pulls. It's a funny change from being a mage where I used to chat quite a bit. During raid times, the dps and channels were always full of conversation. The tank group and chat channels are almost completely dead by comparison. We're too busy keeping an eye on things to bother chatting.

I tend to prefer tank anymore, and being able to set the pace, unless the person tanking is pretty good. Heroics and what not are easy enough that I find a lot of tanks haven't taken the time to learn how to pull and what not. Especially the types who've just collected gear while dpsing in raids and decided to tank when dual-specs were introduced. It's kind of funny, though, to see watch how badly some of the pulls in Ulduar can go when people are used to being able to faceroll content. Not that I'm the best tank out there.

Naxx is extremely boring at this point. Ulduar was a lot of fun, but I don't know that I have enough interest in the game lately to bother trying to join a guild to see more of it. Especially where most raiding guilds on my server want you to raid five nights a week.

We're going to try to pug a 10-man OS for my younger brother's death knight tomorrow. Most of my playtime in the last few weeks has been running him through heroics and 10 man Naxx.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

There you go, just took them now

 

[P0sitr0nic]

My WoW day has sucked. First I hearthed home to IF, and got a map read error, which turned out to corrupt almost all my WOW. Had to uninstall and reinstall (yay, 4 hours)

Then WOW started randomly resetting my computer. It SEEMS to be cleared up, but I dunno.

Have you tried running repair.exe in your WoW folder? I've had that clear up stuff quite well.

Yeah, my repair tool told me it was 100%, but i was still getting errors. When I reinstalled, I got no errors, but my comp reset itself during gameplay. (this may be due to the 128 mb video card I have at the moment, I have a better one waiting)

 

[Teelie]

Gnomer is probably the worst dungeon you could've run. I'm in Naxx 10 right now (literally in the instance on Grob). Bored, bored, bored. Helping a few newer 80's get better gear. Snooze-fest for me now.

Totally understand that. Naxx was great for about two months, then it just got ridiculously boring... last time I went into 10-man Naxx, I grabbed a book and just kept clicking on my Lifebloom hotkey through most fights...

And yeah... Gnomer... ewww....

We ended up quitting in Gluth in part because we didn't have a frost mage (and no mage, period until we tried Gluth w/o one) and tired of trying to find people to replace others who left, including one of the newbie 80's who had to leave and was the main reason we ran 10 man.

It was funny when we got the mage in. He was on vent cursing up a storm about being unable to kite the zombie chow.

 

[Geckothan]

We ended up quitting in Gluth in part because we didn't have a frost mage (and no mage, period until we tried Gluth w/o one) and tired of trying to find people to replace others who left, including one of the newbie 80's who had to leave and was the main reason we ran 10 man.

It was funny when we got the mage in. He was on vent cursing up a storm about being unable to kite the zombie chow.

You can do it with almost any class. Warrior(s) with Piercing Howl work great.

 

[Teelie]

True. I've done it as a prot paly but frost mages work best and not a lot of players know how to kite too well (sadly this includes even frost mages whose best way to level and fight is kiting). We had no warriors either. In fact we had almost exclusively ranged dps and a single ret paly (who didn't want to do it ).

There were two palys, the ret and a tank, three druids, two were trees and one was OT, and three locks as well as a priest (healing) and the mage.

 

[Rob Hal]

I love it when you raid with players who are so cocky about the dps numbers that they put up and like to keep reminding everyone about the numbers... and then when you get to boss that has a particular mechanic like Gluth, where they might have to actually take on some responsibility in the fight, and they just become epic failures.