First Foray onto the PTR

Well I copied my character, waited the 2 days and finally logged into the PTR.

When I copied my toon he had logged out in Borean Tundra and so I immediately flew over to Coldarra to test out the silencing mechanic newly built into talents deep in the Protection tree.

LOVIN IT! This was great, finally I can pull a caster to me instead of having to use line of sight mechanics or rushing in on them. As I was fighting, I realized that the 3 second silence may not be long enough. I would rather go with a 5 or 6 second silence, but hey, I got something which is better than the nothing we all had before.

While there I ran into my first bug. It's only an animation glitch, but it was more than just annoying.



As you can see, I'm no longer fighting anything, but my arms a oddly akimbo as if I'm dodging or getting ready to slash with my sword or shield. And this effect lasted until I summoned my Red Drake and flew away, but came back again once I set down and fought some elementals also in Borean Tundra.

This was when I noticed the new cooldown on the Hearthstone. It's now only 30 minutes!! Even though I hadn't used it since logging in, as soon as I got to Dalaran and had puttered around there for a few minutes I was shocked to find that I only had 10 minutes until I could hearth again.

Since I was on the PTR and nothing I did would have any permanence I decided to zone into Wintergrasp and spend some of my Stone Keeper's Shards on a Black War Mammoth. While this isn't REALLY PTR type stuff, I took some video of it's glory. Not sure if I'm going to allow myself to buy one on my live server, but hey, it was fun for a little bit.



More PTR goodness to come.

Public Test Realm-ing

Because I have recently been writing mostly about PUG aggro or personal issues with the game I decided it was time to jump into the PTR for 3.1.

I really want to be able to write about interesting things happening in the game, and although there are still arguments raging about whether or not Reckoning is worth spending points on, or if Pursuit of Justice in the Retribution tree is pointless (hehe) or not -- I feel like those arguments may continue to rage until the end of time. Or at least the end of WoW (shudder).

Also I am not a mathematician (I can hardly balance my checkbook) so I have little interest in trying to write about current theorycrafting -- check out Elitist Jerks for all that.

I want to be able to report on the reality of upcoming changes to the class and most especially to the Protection spec. So I've downloaded the PTR client and have put my toon in the queue for copying to the PTR. That is supposed to take a couple of days, so I won't have anything new to say on this front for a few days.

IF there are any readers out there who would like me to check something specific out on the PTRs and talk about it, please leave a comment and I will do my best to do so.

I am most psyched to play around with the Shield of the Templar talent change. While we are losing +30% damage in that talent to Shield of Righteousness, Avenger's Shield and Holy Shield that damage is being folded into the base damage of all those spells and being replaced with the ability to SILENCE with Avenger's Shield. HOW FRIGGIN COOL IS THAT? Finally. Seriously.

I also heard somewhere that Shield of Righteousness was no longer going to generate a high amount of threat, but as I cann't find the source for that, I would like to hop into the PTR and get the scoop.

Looking at the latest talent calculator on MMO-Champion, it looks like I will be going Holy 3, Prot 55, Ret 13. And that's quite weird at the moment to look at.

I also want to check out the dual spec deal and also I am wondering about mana issues with the changes to Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement. I believe that I will have no problem keeping my mana up, but I would really like to see what's going on.

So, dear reader, look forward to some interesting articles about what's coming up for paladins and tankadins in the 3.1 patch.

Auf wiedersehen!

Busy busy busy

In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty busy right now and have had trouble writing.

Work is keeping me quite busy. Home is always busy with 6 month old baby, girlfriend, dog and various other things. And then there's Warcraft.

As it stands I am on a streak of trying to run as many heroics as I can as often as I can. So on the nights that I know I have more than a few hours, I try to run at least 2 heroics. Alot of the time, unless it's scheduled ahead of time that means trying to put together a PUG, which can be great or insanely awful at any given moment.

Plus I have just been elected as the raid leader for our guild, so I have to work very closely with the raid leader of our allied guild, Remains of the Fallen in order to get some stuff done. And that takes up time.

Along with the scheduling of the raids and deciding composition numbers from each guild -- here's hoping we can keep it to 5/5 -- there are the gear/experience/skill factors with the membership of my guild.

I am totally sure and confident of 3 of our players. 100%. No worries. At all.

One of those is me, and yeah, I guess there is some hesitation for me on new content, but I know I'm geared and I have the right skills to figure most fights out (given that I've done some research).

And there are really some bright stars that are rising quickly in our guild, both in skill and gear (there experience is usually not something I worry too much about in the beginning).

Anyhoooo. So I might not be writing as much as I'd like, or you my dear reader(s).

Cheers.

Not Warcraft or Paladin related in any way!

This is my daughter, Dune. She's so cute it's painful to look at sometimes.



I will most likely write something Warcraft related later.

This just needed to be added.

This is Easy. Fail.

"But this is easy."

How many times have I heard that from a dpser?

Yeah sure it's easy for you, you just have to stand there and hit your buttons and what? Not pay attention to threat meters, not pay attention to incoming adds, not pay attention to the healers mana, not pay attention to the tank moving the mob.

Argh, this subject makes me so angry. When someone comes into a group and just assumes that whatever they are doing will be easy and they can proceed with no cares in the world.



When grouping it is important to remember that there are 4 other people in the group with you. They all have differing levels of gear, experience and skill -- all three of which are insanely important in how "easy" anything is.

I can't tell you how many times I have run with a PUG in an heroic and someone keeps saying that this should be a breeze and that, "any 80 will have 1300 dps." Then, when I remind them that people are always leveling alts or new toons they take a step back and I can hear them gulp a little.

Yeah, we might have some under-prepared members of our group -- people who aren't geared enough or don't have any idea how to deal with the first boss in heroic gundrak or just aren't very good at their class.

You just don't know until you hit that first boss.

Just, please please please remember: Unless you're in a guild run or with good friends, you never REALLY know the capabilities of the other people in your PUG. The Armory can't tell you that they're watching Dollhouse on hulu while running heroic Azjol-Nerub.

And there isn't a spell for healing stupid.

What? You mean I have a blog to write?

Well things have been pretty slow in my WoW life recently. Not much sweet gear, although unless it's truly friggin awesome I wouldn't post it anyways. Heroics runs have had the same chance to be great or to fail epicly depending on group makeup.

I've also been very busy at work, and that bleeds over into the blog writing.

I keep playing, and when I can't get a group I mostly farm for herbs or do the Hodir daily quests.

Sometimes I kill something randomly just because I want to. This is one such instance (not dungeon).



I really love the models on these guys -- with their toothy grins!

One thing that is happening that I will be excited to see come to fruition, (if it does) is the alliance between my current guild, Elven Fellowship, and our friends over at Remain of the Fallen. We have just created a chat channel in-game that we all share, so that should build relations between the two groups.

My understanding is that they are in much the same place as our guild. We don't have the numbers to really field a 10 man group, we don't want to change our focus to hardcore progression and we don't want to be swallowed up by a large guild just so we can raid. So we're just going to get together with another like-minded group and hope it all works out.

I know that that Remains has some great players, and so have we, we'll just have to see how the two can come together.

On a totally different note, I screamed through a 44 minute Heroic Nexus run last night with a nicely heavy dps group.



I died at the end dragon when she was at 2% because I thought to myself, oh we got this, and then stopped jumping and promptly died. The rest of the group spanked her down so it didn't matter much -- just a slightly higher repair bill.

Oh well that's all for now.

Cheers.

Still Pissed Off or Group Dynamics 101

Some things from the past still piss me off when I think about them.

I still get angry when I think about that priest that stole the mining node out from under me when I was fighting mobs in a cave in Winterspring. I had actually hit the node once, and then was attacked. While I fought them off she came up and clicked away. (slow simmering anger)

I still get mad at the many many times my very first toon wiped in Gnomer because of stupid people and those dwarves with their mines.

And I get mad by road-ragers in PUGs, and that anger stays with me for a couple of days.

Last night I logged on with the express purpose of getting my last two heroic badges so I could purchase my sexy Waistguard of Living Iron. Just two badges, how hard could that be? Well, let me tell you:

Got onto LFG channel and put myself forward as tank for Heroic Gundrak, Utgarde Keep and Nexus, mostly because I am familiar with their heroic bits and pieces. I also asked what the heroic daily was and instead of a reply got an invite. The invite was, in fact, to the daily which was Culling of Stratholme, Caverns of Time. Alright, I know I'm statistical ready for that instance, even though I have never been on a heroic run.


I told the rest of the group that this would be my first heroic run, to which they mentioned that they intended to make it a timed run. Which means that we have to run through the instance as fast as possible in order to get a boss that goes away after ... 25 minutes I think (?). I mentioned that this would, of course, be my first timed run, but that I was up for the challenge -- only thing, "If I start going the wrong way, just ping on the mini-map or yell at me." No one said anything and we traveled to and started the instance.

We got to the first boss, the abomination guy, and things had been going quite smoothly. He was downed and we moved on.

I had been moving quite quickly, not even bothering with any non-elite mobs, as I was told. We turned and rushed to the other side of the instance only we were moving just a little too fast I guess because the new elites had not spawned yet and we passed their spawn point (everyone but one member of the group was following me without question). The last member of our team was waiting for us at the appropriate spawn point for the next set of elites and said so.

I turned us around and run up to him, but BOOM the elites spawned and downed him. We got into the fight and things were totally disorganized at that point. I concede that was partially my fault, but I DID tell them that I might need some direction. Slam slam slam -- full wipe. I wasn't all that bothered, but one of the members just started yelling and yelling calling me a f*cking noob etc, etc, etc. At first I thought, "Ok, he's just got to get that off his chest, then I can re-explain that I had told them I was going to need some help in navigation."

But this guy just kept berating me, and after the third "f*cking noob" I knew I was done with this B.S. I told them that next time they should look for another tank and promptly left the group. I was so angry. I really wanted to get through that instance and prove to myself that I was not only statisically ready (right stam, enough armor, uncrittable), but play-ready as well. I guess I wasn't. Nor was I with the right group.

Sometimes it's all about the group.


As soon as I hearthed back to Dalaran I put myself back into LFG and was immediately invited to an Heroic Gundrak run. I sighed, hoping that I would not need to deal with any grief and accepted the invite. Within 5 minutes we had a full group and within 15 we were zoning in. The run went well. We had some problems as I think some people had never run it on heroic, and perhaps some of our dps was a little low, but we got through it with the minimum of fuss.


And no one called anyone a NOOB.

I got my two badges, and then some, ported back to Dalaran and got my new shiny purple belt. I was just about to port back to Ironforge and gem it up when some friends whispered that they needed a tank in Gruul's Lair for the achievement.

I accepted their invite and summons and we downed Gruul with 17 people and only a few deaths.

Really, it comes down to the group dynamic. When in a group try to be polite, you never know what's going on in the background for any person. And if someone screws up, it should not be that big of a deal, unless, of course they throw blame around and start calling everyone else a f*cking noob.

And seriously. Listen to your groupmates. They will tell you things that you never knew before, or tell you that they really don't know what they are doing, so you can find a more experienced player for that instance or encounter. If you're not listening, how can you know what is going on?

If you're not listening, then when something bad happens, at least some of the blame falls squarely on your shoulders. Really.