TankSpot - Blogs - The ramblings of a triple-tank by Norrath

Ding.

Norrath — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:44:39 GMT

I totally dinged 22 today (13/09/08).

Yay me.

Phasing Technology

Norrath — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:47:44 GMT

J. Allen Brack, one of the producers of Wrath of the Lich King, mentioned something called 'phasing technology' in an interview with Eurogamer a couple days ago. (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=221566)

He mentions it has to do with "world states", and depending on what 'flags' you have, you will see one or the other.

One of the most obvious examples is Ebon Hold -- for starting death knights, Ebon Hold is chock full of Naxxramas and Lich King NPCs. Once they've completed their main questline, however, they cannot see those NPCs any longer.

Sort of an 'instanced' world view.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited this makes me.

It makes it possible to move storylines along.

Remember Onyxia? For Alliance players, at the end of a long quest-chain, you would 'out' her in the middle of Stormwind. Except, five minutes later, she'd be back.

When this gets implemented, she could disappear. While I realize it might not be possible to fix old world quests like this -- it would sure be one hell of a job -- it would be SO AWESOME to have it done.

You've rescued those villagers? Great, they're now home and you won't find them in danger again.

You blew up that house? It stays blown up to you, but the guy next to you who hasn't done the quest sees it whole.

The only problem with this is that it introduces a disjoined world view... but frankly, I can live with it. This is an AMAZING step forward.

On Paladin Taunt and Maggy

Norrath — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:36:52 GMT

So, yesterday, one of my friends invited my paladin along on a Gruul run with his raid group.

Needless to say, since his raid group is the furthest progressed on the server (beating themselves up against M'uru at the moment, I believe -- though don't quote me on that), both Maulgar and Gruul were one-shot, despite mainly comprising of alts and randoms. I didn't exactly do much aside from keep JoV up, but I had fun regardless. All the loot was available via rolls, though they were still ML'd. Didn't win anything (got all three types of tokens), but my friend got the warrior shoulders on his alt.

Anyway, then I learn they're going to do Maggy next. I think 'yay, a chance at T4 chest, awesome!' and immediately decide to tag along.

Now, the raid group in question was using Vent to communicate detailed instructions. I tried to get on, but my version of vent is too old, and since we were just doing Gruul, I decided to hell with it. I know those encounters pretty damn well anyway.

My paladin is not very well geared -- 11k health unbuffed, barely uncrushable, 15k armor, etc. Still, I could tank channelers with no problem, right?

I get assigned the second kill, which my friend poked fun at me at. "Now you'll have to learn to do proper threat haha!"

Now, I didn't realize they were using vent to countdown the kill -- I blame being sleepy, but meh -- and it didn't matter during the first attempt, as I managed to catch the channeler fast enough to prevent it running rampant. I had equipped threat gear for it (270s SD), then blew Wings, then started in on my rotation -- and no one came close to pulling it off of me. We kill the channelers in smooth order and move onto Maggy.

Then at 10%, debris kills us -- not sure why. One second we're home free, the next 90% of the raid is dead.

We haul our asses back in there, get ready again... and when they pull, I'm a little too slow to react. I immediately start tossing my shield, but it *missed*. I thought, "SHIT", checked its target (a healadin), then hit RD to get it back.

Two seconds later, three channelers are whacking at me. Apparently the druid who was tanking two had drawn aggro off the healadin just a second before I hit RD. We wiped pretty soon after that.

They immediately start going, "What the hell did you do? Why'd you taunt off the tank?!" and I try to defend myself. I had blundered in not getting off a Judgement rather than start tossing the shield, but I still felt it wasn't my fault. How could I know the channeler would target the druid tank? I explained that I wasn't on vent and so couldn't time myself properly which was why I hadn't been able to grab it in the first place. They still blamed me, but things calmed down fast enough and the RLer decided to do a /rw as well as call it out in vent for my benefit. We try again and this time there's no problem. I immediately judge on 'GO' and we're rolling.

We had another two wipes (unrelated to me), then finally got him down. Two Champion drops, though I don't win either.

That run really opened my eyes to how god-awful annoying RD's ToT mechanics are, and how unwelcome its multi-target nature is.

Gimme a real taunt! One that only affects one target, and which doesn't have the ToT mechanic. RD is a crutch in far too many situations, despite the wonderful, wonderful range it has.

Crazy PvP Antics

Norrath — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:14:19 GMT

Okay, so not so much "crazy"... except that I grinded the entire thing in one day, one sitting.

My Blood Elf paladin hit 39 today, and suddenly I remembered that both WSG and AB have plate rewards available at 40 -- and as I was 39, I was just the right level for grinding it out!

Well, I did. 41 AB marks and 22 WSG marks later, my Blood Elf now is the proud owner of [item]20209[/item], [item]20206[/item], and [item]19581[/item].

And I'm still 39...

As an aside, holy *crap* is PvP fun as Ret -- at least in that level bracket. The battlegroup is the smallest in Europe, so I think I saw two twinks total. I *steamrolled* people. So much fun...

Blood Elf Paladin Mount!

Norrath — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:42:44 GMT

The last week or so I've been playing on a Blood Elf paladin I rolled on the newest EU realm -- Blade's Edge, PvE.

Yesterday I finally got what I wanted -- the Blood Elf paladin mount. I hit level 30, and immediately rushed off to the trainer to learn Summon Warhorse.

Ever since I saw it the first time, I've been jealous. :p

The guild I'm in is surprisingly active, with between 10 and 20 players on most of the day. It's a decent guild, with some bad apples and some good. So far, I like it.

I'm rather surprised with how many new players I've encountered on Blade's Edge -- I think maybe one third of the people in the guild have never played before. It gets somewhat repetitive after a while to answer how you get to Undercity from Silvermoon, but it's still good to see that new people still join WoW. :)

Motivation

Norrath — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:00:29 GMT

I'm in a bit of a black mood these days...

I've pretty much lost my motivation in gearing up my characters.

If I could find a good, solid raid guild, even if it was on a different server, I think I'd be happier... but once again, I don't have much motivation to look for it.

These days, I don't raid. I don't enjoy running Heroics every day, so badge upgrades come slowly, if at all. I'm not a PvPer -- I've been into an arena exactly 5 times, and the most I get out of Battlegrounds is frustration. It took me a good month of sporadic play to get my S1 shield.

My paladin is in a different spot than my warrior -- even if I wanted to run Heroics on her, I couldn't. She doesn't have the health pool to survive a Heroic without a very good healer and at the very least moderate CC, which sorta ruins the point in using my paladin to run Heroics in the first place.

I've been pugging occasionally, but it's usually more of an exercise in frustration than not. My healers in the average pick-up group don't like me when I tank entire mob packs, but I simply do not get the damage-intake I need to keep the run smooth otherwise. Drinking after every pull is... frustrating.

A week or two ago, I had a case of loot drama which also served to make me want to stay the hell away from pugs. I was in a normal Steam Vaults run on my paladin with a good friend of mine who usually do not run instances (not that he's not skilled, he just doesn't do it often). When we started the group, we had a Prot warrior (who was the one to invite me), a warlock and another paladin who was healing. We made it to the first boss before the warlock DCd, then wiped to the boss because the healer just plain sucked. We replaced the warlock with a warrior... Urgh. Another try at the boss. I had marked the boss "skull" because I was planning on simply tanking the adds, but the new warrior shouted "kill adds first!!" and charged one of them, which made him die. We wiped, though that wasn't the reason. The paladin left at that point because he didn't have time (we had taken quite a while to get to the boss) and the Prot warrior decided to go as well. We got in a priest and a mage, and they were decent. We managed to down the boss, though not until after another wipe (apparently the priest couldn't move when hit by a hurricane). The run went mostly smooth after that, though the warrior kept proving how much of an idiot he was ("I have epics, that means I'm good" <-- direct quote. His epics were S1. He also said, "I'm almost exalted with this place, I know everything"). Anyway, we finally got to the last boss, and lo and behold: [item]Devilshark Cape[/item] dropped! I was pleased; the main reason why I went to Steam Vaults was that cloak.

Then the idiot warrior needed on it.

Sigh.

On a different note, I've begun building a world for a D&D game I've wanted to start, and while it's still mostly loose ideas in my head, it's starting to come together, which is a good thing. I'm not the best DM -- I'm not much good at improvisation -- but I'm the only shot we have at getting a game going around here, ever since the only DM we knew moved away. I have the main villain and his desires down, I just need... well... the rest of the plot.

On the merits of ganking...

Norrath — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:03:09 GMT

What exactly is it that appeals so much about ganking?

I don't get it. Never have. I've heard the whole "Well, I got ganked, so now I'm taking it out on others" spiel -- but that's bullshit, quite frankly. Those 'others' never did anything to you, so why exactly are you attacking them?

Now, it's not that much of a problem. One can easily level on a PvP server and avoid ganking; there are plenty of ways. Quest/grind during late night hours (and US people can find a server which is out of sync with their own timezone to make this easier). You can visit less-popular zones, ala Desolace. You can avoid the gankfest that is STV. You can suck it up (which I usually do). Of course, one can also simply avoid PvP servers altogether.

But that's merely treating the symptoms, not the disease, so to speak.

What makes it so fun to kill people who basically can't defend themselves? I just don't get it.

Fair world PvP -- where any fight where both players can see the level of the opponent is considered "fair" -- is fun, good, and enjoyable. There's constantly a "risk" involved in questing/grinding, which adds a certain thrill. This is essentially what it's like at level 70. But when you're levelling and getting constantly ganked by ?? toons -- you just don't stand a chance.

Maybe I'm just not made for PvP servers...

History of a WoW Player

Norrath — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:21:26 GMT

So, I've finally decided to add my contributions to the blogging system.

First off, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Daniel, a 21-year old Dane living in a smallish city pretty much smack in the middle of Denmark, or at least south of it. Most of my time is spent on WoW, whether it's reading forums, playing, or simply chatting about it with friends. I also attempt to keep up apperances that I'm not wholly absorbed by WoW by playing other computer games (lately NWN2), reading Japanese manga (and occasionally watching the associated anime), having the occasional D&D session, and playing chess online (and losing horribly).

I've played WoW ever since the game was released in Europe (and a couple weeks before that during open beta). WoW was my first MMO, and safe to say, I was hooked -- and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. After a short while of playing, I introduced my immediate family (my brothers and my father) as well as a friend to the game, and they all took to it just as I had. I thought I knew something of the game by then, obviously, and I distinctly remember telling my new recruits that "Deadmines was really, really hard" and that they "should wait before going in there, or they were going to die". Yeah... I was pretty much a total noob.

During the first year of playing the game, I familiarized myself with playing a paladin--refreshing Blessings, casting the occasional heal, but mostly just smashing things (slowly). I didn't care that it was slow, at least most of the time, and I went happy at my own pace. I was asked to sign a guild charter at level 18 while walking through Stormwind, and I've pretty much been stuck in the guild ever since, in one form of another. I made some very good friends there, even though most of the people I started out with aren't playing anymore. Still, the guild grew, and new friends replaced old... though that's not exactly the right word to use.

At one point during my 40s, I got really stuck in-game. I was burnt out playing the paladin, as I had absolutely no idea where to put talent points. I don't even remember my original builds -- they were pretty horrible. I rolled my first alt - a mage. I used an old D&D name for him, Szar, and he quickly became a favorite. I played him much of the time, though I didn't completely abandon the paladin, as most of my guildies had hit 60 by the time and they were clamoring for me level faster so I could come to instances with them. When my paladin finally hit 60 during her first Scholomance run, I quickly became disappointed with her, mostly because I still didn't completely understand the game (though because I had mastered the actual controls, and the spells, I thought I did). The mage hit 40, got his mount from money I took from the paladin, and I levelled him as well. His levelling was also rather slow, at least for a mage, as I still didn't fully understand the concept of talent builds (I was Arcane at the time... shudder).

Anyway, as the mage was closing in on hitting 60, I was getting burnt out again (as running the 60 instances on my paladin didn't happen as much as I wanted it to -- paladins were not wanted for pugs back then), and as the guild couldn't run many groups due to the lack of tanks... I rolled my warrior. I had no concept of tanking at the time, and I had no idea that paladins were even capable of tanking.

My guild's best rogue decided to reroll warrior with me, and for a time, Norrath and Linu, the gnome warrior, were tearing up Duskwood, Gnomeregan, and the early SM instances. Linu, however, was a much better player than I was, and he insisted on tanking (which I was happy to let him). The concepts of specific talent builds for specific purposes were slowly beginning to occur to me at the time. Linu quickly shot past me in levels, though, and I abandoned the warrior for a time.

At this point (I think? Might've been earlier), RP-PvP servers were introduced. I've always been a roleplayer, and the server I started on was naturally an RP-server. I was infatuated with the concept of PvP, however, and I slowly decided to reroll on one of them. I got one of my brothers along, and as I rolled another warrior, he rolled a gnome rogue.

At the same time, some of my guild mates decided to reroll Horde on a different RP-PvP server, and I was torn on where to go. I had no ties to my new server, plenty of ties on my old one, and good friends on an entirely different server. I started a Horde alt, my first foray into the world of druids, but in the end, I decided to go back to my mage and level him all the way to 60.

Linu, the gnome warrior I levelled Norrath with during the 20-35 stretch, had hit 60 at roughly the same time, and now the concept of raiding were beginning to tantalize us. We wanted to raid, but as a very casual-friendly guild, this was just not easy -- the guild was small, and we feared inviting too many people would ruin the atmosphere of friendship we had. I was the guild master at the time, and the guild decided as a whole to go to another guild in the same situation and run UBRS with them (which we couldn't muster enough to on our own). While the run was a success, we couldn't get another one started, and it fell apart. I was determined not to give up on raiding, however, and I got the guild together again -- and this time, we decided to try and start a raiding coalition. My father, who was not in my guild, was invited along, and slowly, the raid group Via Prudensiae came into existance. A select few among the guild were already raiding with such raid coalitions, as were my brothers. My elder brother, who was never as much into the game as the rest of us, had fallen out of touch with the game at this point, and stopped raiding. When we lacked healers for our initial forays into Zul'Gurub, I asked him to join us on his druid.

At this point, I finally got into the mechanics behind the game, mostly due to a sort-of mentor I had within the guild. He had started playing much later than I did, but he knew immediately what to look for. I was proud of my mage at the time, but when I saw that his warlock could produce more DPS than I could, I decided to get into talent builds properly. I specced him 40/11, for Pyroblast, and immediately saw an improvement. This started my theorycrafting on mages, sending me for the first time into the abyss known as the official EU-WoW forums.

As Via Prudensiae took form, I became the mage class leader pretty much by default. I was the one who had instigated the meeting that started the group, and as I was the only mage, I took up the mantle. We shot through Zul'Gurub, and my understanding of the mechanics grew -- greatly. I finally began understanding what a noob I had been, and I spent quite a bit of time playing with talent builds for different classes. As we continued into Molten Core after we finally mustered enough people (though we rarely had a full 40-man raid), I started playing with alts again. I experimented with tanking once in Uldaman, but it was such a disaster that I immediately lost any desire to try it out again, and I levelled to my early 50s as Fury.

Linu, who was the warrior leader of Via Prudensiae, and also our MT, didn't care much for Fury warriors -- and he constantly teased me that I should spec Protection. Finally, at his behest, I respecced and tanked Sunken Temple -- and actually enjoyed it. Reassured that I wasn't a complete failure within the tanking role, I took on Blackrock Depths -- a place I had hated on my paladin and my mage. At that time, I fell completely in love with tanking when I discovered that I could tank 3 of the Dark Iron dwarves at once -- and with relative ease. My group complimented me on my tanking, and I grew very proud. I finally levelled him the rest of the way to 60, making sure to mark out what tanking gear I wanted and to work my way towards it.

When my third toon hit 60, Ahn'Qiraj was well under way. We had had a few forays into Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj earlier, but due to poor gear and poorer tactics, we abandoned the attempt quickly. After Molten Core was on farm -- which happened relatively quickly -- AQ20 was finally fully cleared, and we lulled for a while. I took my warrior into MC, ZG, and AQ20 as an alt, but due to VP's poor management (which I was a part of), I wasn't satisfied.

I began looking at the druid I had abandoned with my old guild mates on the Horde RP-PvP server, and I began tinkering with him again. I juggled with the idea of switching servers again, as I greatly enjoyed their company (and they introduced me to their guild -- a proper raiding guild; something I've always wanted to be a part of). I didn't properly understand the druid at the time, though, and I grew frustrated with levelling him, and I abandoned the idea.

We began running Blackwing Lair, and we did pretty well, though it was much, much slower going than the other instances had been. I grew bored with my mage, and after Nefarian was defeated, I called it quits. I gave the leader role to a mage I trusted would handle it well, and began levelling an alt again -- this time, a druid. I had already experimented with druids during my two brief stays with my old guild mates on the Horde RP-PvP server, and as I hadn't enjoyed the playstyle much, I wasn't expecting a great deal out of the druid. This time, though, I was amazed -- it was actually fun! I began levelling her quite a bit, and when TBC hit the shelves, Alliera was level 52.

I already had 3 60s, but I really enjoyed playing as a druid -- the tanking, the DPS. Melee DPS is so much more fun than ranged, I felt. As such, I was torn on whom to level towards 70. While I knew the mechanics better on my warrior, my warrior couldn't DPS -- and my druid could do both. When TBC first came out, I took my warrior to Hellfire Peninsula, and tanked my way through the first four instances, levelling him to 62. This was fun, I felt, and I could enjoy this -- but the druid was fun also. Against all reason, I decided to make the druid my main.

Levelling from 52 to 58 was gruelling, as I constantly heard from my guild mates getting thorugh instances and experiencing new zones, and I -so- wanted to join them. I persevered, however, and soon, Outlands was open to me. Druids were still fun, and I levelled mostly through quests, though I joined the occasional group. There were not many, though, as the initial levelling rush had passed. I hit 70 some time in February, and my old raid group was busy running Karazhan. I joined up with them again, but due to a particularly bad case of guild drama, the raid group split up and a lot of people quit the game altogether.

I followed most of the rest and joined a different raid group.

The raid group was decent, almost as good as my old one had been, and we progressed fairly quickly. The group had already downed Gruul once, though that had been mostly luck, and we managed to get him on farm. Karazhan was old hat by this time, and Magtheridon was the next road-block on the horizon. However, the group used loot rules that conflicted greatly with me, and I was on the verge of quitting the game altogether. I pulled out of raiding, out of the game for a while, and when I came back, to my surprise, the raid group had dissolved.

While I was raiding, I levelled my mage -- mostly for funds. My old passion for mages was long gone, and while I enjoyed playing him, he was not anything but a pasttime now. I also played a bit on my warrior, again for funds (and for experimenting with Fury).

When I came back, I decided to abandon the druid, and I redoubled my levelling efforts to get my warrior up to speed. I got him to 70 mostly through instances, tanking this and that. When I tanked Black Morass at 68, I finally felt at peace -- I liked tanking on Norrath better than I ever did on Alliera, and to hell with the lack of DPS.

When he hit 70, I had a problem, however. I did not feel like poking my feet into the raiding kettle at the time, both because he wasn't geared and I didn't feel prepared -- and for a week or so, I PvP'd a little. I mostly played alts, though none of them interested me much.

When my guild, which had gone through a massive restructuring (and had actually become a different guild) upon hitting TBC due to my ineptitude as guild master, decided to start running Karazhan for alts and non-raiding mains, I was hooked. I loved Karazhan, and I had the opportunity to be the main tank here. I spurred on, got my flying mount, got Norrath attuned, got him geared, and I went into Karazhan once again. We ran once a week on Sundays, and I greatly enjoyed it.

Soon, though, I began entertaining thoughts of joining another raid group and get more out of raiding. Zul'Aman was about to hit, and I wanted to get in on it as soon as possible. Though I didn't particularly enjoy doing it, I stopped raiding KZ on my warrior and applied to a raid group. I still ran Karazhan on Alliera, just to make sure the guild runs could still go.

The raid group, however, proved a disappointment. I had wanted a casual raid group due to constraints on my time to raid, and that's exactly what I got -- to my great displeasure. While Karazhan went fine, our forays into Zul'Aman were almost pure frustration, due to the lax requirements (if it can even be called that) the raid group instituted. When I first joined them on a 25-man raid, I knew I was in the wrong place. The next day, I pulled out.

I went back to tanking Karazhan with the guild, but our current guild master was getting burnt out on the pressure -- and just before New Years, he quit the guild. The very same day, some of the guild mates who were raiding with other raid coalitions got together within the guild to run Karazhan -- for the sole purpose of gearing up one of their friends who had just hit 70. I felt this as a stab in the back -- because they drew away that many players, we couldn't get our regularly scheduled run to go, and I was quite frankly pissed off. I left the server, though not the guild, and went to a different RP-PvP server (as the guild mates I knew on the other server had quit the game for good long before TBC hit).

I decided to level up a lowbie orc warrior I had. I focused on him for quite some time (even managed to hit the early 50s), but after about a month or so, I began missing my main on my old server, as well as my friends. I started slowly going back, and as I was well into TankSpot at this time, I got interested in levelling my paladin as Protection. I had played around with it before, as well as with Holy, and I began levelling her seriously. I got into many spells where I didn't play much, though, and I took my time with it. When she was 68, the 2.4 patch notes had been released -- and my brothers decided to try and get our weekly runs going again.

I decided I wanted to join on the paladin, and as I knew I couldn't possibly get my mis-match of tanking gear ready for the following sunday (which was in two days), I specced Shaleen Holy, went through Heroic Ramparts with my family and a guild mate, and levelled her as fast as I ever had. I hit 70 the night before sunday, and I borrowed the gold for her flying mount. She got attuned to Karazhan within hours, and quite against what I had believed, joined the run that day.

My brothers were along, but most of the group was composed of our new guild master's raid group -- a group with most of Black Temple on farm. I got some quite good upgrades, both healing and tanking, and for a bit, I was torn on whether to go Holy permanently. I ultimately decided against it and specced her Protection once again.

It turned out that the Karazhan run was a one-time thing, though - and now my paladin was stuck in-between normals and Heroics with her gear. Half of it was blue and acceptable, one third of it was green and completely not, and one third of it was epic. She had the armor, but not the health, to withstand heroics -- which meant she took rather little damage in normals. I pugged a few times, but I had trouble keeping aggro, as my healers complained if I tanked too many mobs, and I didn't take enough damage otherwise.

That's still mostly my current situation. It's better now, as I replaced one of the greens with one of the blue PvP pieces, but it's still not enough.

My warrior is half-geared in Karazhan epics and blues, and I pretty much feel he is "complete" -- as complete as I want him to be for now. He can tank all of Karazhan, making him somewhat above my druid. My paladin is what I want to focus on, but it's hard working up the motivation currently.

Sorry for the huge wall of text -- if you read through to the end, I appreciate it!

--Norrallieraleen