Healer Agression

Why do most people blame healers upon their deaths? I wasn't the one healing at this Underbog run - but as I saw, "ffs do your job healer" from a very dead warlock we invited as one of the hunters left before Swamplord Mussek, my temper flared. Let me state beforehand that this healer is awesome - he keeps people alive by keeping me alive, and he didn't bat an eyelid as I start running around CCing stuff, he, by short, though a shadow priest, is the healer of my dreams. And I treat mediocre healers like gold. So he would probably be a precious Thorium or something, for me.

So I saw that message, and my previously light mood turned dark. This stupid, stupid lock who spams that orange thing RaW thing on the middle of the screen (did not quite catch its name), and who yells, and who gets lost dared be rude to my healer? The healer was clearly out of mana, obviously only enough to keep me alive. If you don't want to die, then install Omen and stop being an aggro whore, thank you. You and your pet, both.

The party chat was silent after that - until he asked for a rez (when priest was still OOM). The healer replied, "no, your rude," and I swear I would've hugged him right there for not taking any shit. Before I get any satisfaction from kicking the locktard, he left the party, and the only satisfaction I get is that I have yet another person on my ignore list - and the good news is, there are around five people there. Which means that PuGs aren't that bad. Let's just say I let out a yelp of happiness as I saw the events unfold.

Healers are rarer than gold. When you piss off one and end up on ignore, you've pretty much decreased your chances on getting a group... quite significantly.

Oh. And trapping. One of the hunters were going crazy with traps - unasked. So when it broke, it would immediately head to the healer. It wastes my taunt, the healer's mana, and when I decide to be nice and not break it, it risks other party members, and it's just plain stupid. Huntards, if you want to trap when there's no pretty moon on top of any heads, then do it right. If you trap, you chain-trap. Stop being so paranoid. I'm trying hard to do my job and you show your trust by placing traps left and right? Gee, thanks. Next time I'll just forget to taunt that thing that's coming to you. And of course I'll remember to ask the healer to forget healing too.

In the end, with a help from the healer's guildies, we downed the first boss, and Pauldrons of the Brute Force dropped. It seemed I ended up as the happiest member in the run at that time. By the way, healer and me ended up adding one another to our friend list, and after chatting for a good few hours (criticizing the party was one of the topics, of course) let me say - that guy is a nutcase.

Seems like I won't have so much trouble trying to find a healer, after this :)

And at 187 spell damage, I have concerns about holding aggro to non-Omen party members.

I'm a Blood Knight!

Whoever says that they'd saved 200g on the pally epic charger needs to be hammer of wrath'd.

One day, after tired of much prompting (and 'WTF, fiery? Buy your mount!' 'nooo... I'm too lazy.'), and general sympathy for my assumed money matters from various people who got told a 'no' every time they inquired about my epic mount, I decided to just do that quest. If only for the tabard. Yes, the only thing I wanted was the awesome tabard. And my dignity would never recover from having to ride a blue, skinny chocobo. The horse doesn't even look that good. Kinda overfed, IMO.

After a Ramps/BF marathon, I hopped on to Thottbot, and as always, before any quest, I would read it up. A guy mentioned saving 200g. Wow. Then I read the 150g + arcane catalyst + that 150g poison reagents. Now. assuming that I'm revered within Silvermoon (which I am), the arcane catalyst would still cost 42g, and the poison 125g (if I recall correctly). That's 312g. Give or take.

How much was the training cost again?

10 sungrass, 40 runecloth, 5 darkrunes, and that other thing. I assume that guy would've farmed it all on his own. 0g. And how long would it take to farm those stuff? A few hours? Time is money, and in that regard, my hour is priceless, thank you. Therefore, I realized that his calculation is flawed.

Thus I went to the AH and bought them all except for the sungrass. 670g shrank down to 300g. Maybe even less. I kept bitching at party chat and to whoever wants to listen. I found out that the quest at Tyr's Hand was no longer elite, so I followed another comment at Thott's, stripped naked, and hopped on my mount there. I tried to find the back door to the chapel but couldn't, so I retraced my steps and went back through the front one. Only aggroed two mobs into the library, but seeing that I was fighting naked, soon I died with my shield on. I forgot to equip my mace. Never listen to the run around naked comment. That simply isn't paladin style. I'd rather die fully clothed and with dignity (oh, how I used to frown at those female characters running around naked. What would people think if they saw me?!), paying exuberant amount of gold, rather than shameful and bare to the world. After handing in the quest, I spammed trade for a Black pristine diamond. Seeing no results, I decided to go on an SP run (previous post) and call it a day.

...And logged back in a few hours later at 3am. Spammed /2 WTB black pristine diamond for a good 30 minutes to no avail. Re-checked the log, then found out that I've been mixing it up. It's Pristine Black Diamond. No wonder my link add-on didn't recognize it. Or maybe it's the other way around. I cycled around 3 potential sellers to finally snatch it for 50g (which is around the going rate for AH. According to auctioneer.). I /cheered, spammed smilies, went off to buy the rest of the vendor reagents, looked at my bag, and with a sinking feeling, saw 42g left.

;-( << My expression just then and a day after it.

Luckily, saving much frustration, Sari the holy pally decided to give me a run for the final part. Then I DCed. And couldn't get back online. That was the time where I would've happily went hammer happy with my modem. I went to sleep with much grudge. As I logged in at the same day, I was immediately offered a run again, and after a "I'M REALLY SORRY ABOUT LAST NIGHT!" we went for another attempt. This time he had the key to the city, so the whole thing took around ten minutes. I cannot possibly thank him enough.

I'm a proud owner of the blood knight's tabard now, and a glowing horse as a side-dish. Never have I felt more honored, both as a horde and as a blood knight. I sport my tabard and my thalassian charger with a renewed sense of pride, and finally and identity to wear proudly, worthy of the horde.

That being said, I miss the alliance side badly. I'll take a stroll on Ironforge and Westfall and its proximity for nostalgia's sake, someday. And yell, "FOR THE ALLIANCE!" for added effect. What can I say. I'm still an alliance in heart.

I'm a Jerk

Is what I kept thinking to myself after I saw that hunter leave. It happened during a Slave Pens run, with a holy pally and three hunters. Despite my initial fears of having three hunters in the same party, I braced myself and accepted the summon. Some of them were already in, and as I ran in to join them, I noticed that they were already attacking stuff without me, the tank, and HunterA was dead. Okay.

/p Can't you guys wait?
HunterA: Nope.

I took that as a joke. We went in, and because of the party leader's lacking marking system, I took over, and explained it to them. All went fine, until I noticed that my mob kept having that three red streaks on top of its head. One of the pets and me were literally competing for aggro. I told the owner, HunterA, to turn off growl. It got ignored. I figured he did. He didn't. I asked again and again, soon that smiley turned into curt orders. Then, as I wondered whether he spoke English, I barked off another 'turn that growl off' order, and lo, he left.

/p ...I only wanted that growl off... I'm a jerk.

Let me clarify this, I've never, ever caused anyone to leave like that in my gaming life. Ever. It made me feel bad for a while, I mean, this isn't my group, but rather one that I hijacked, and I caused an original member to leave. I got into a state of guilt. I didn't even shout at him, only told him curtly to turn that stupid pet's aggro off. Did I do the right thing? Should I just have ignored it and kept everyone happy? :(

On the other hand, I also /ignored a priest because he invited me multiple times without whispering first when I've specifically stated on my LFG, "Prot pally - please PST before invite."

PMS Shorsha = Fail.

On Nazan and Tankadins

Tanked ramps again today, with a group composition of: lock, shaman, hunter, holy priest, and yours truly. When we were LFMing, the following conversation occured:

Shaman: we need a warrior tank
Me: Why?
Shaman: because we always wipe with a pally tank
Me: Player problems?
Shaman: no, 4 times with 4 diff pallies

Right, he'd pretty much stereotyped all pallies as Nazan wipers. I can understand that. I have similar sentiments to rogues and hunters too. So I said, "well, if we can get a warrior who wants to tank, I don't mind healing," and we got the party full a few moments later - with me still as tank. I wanted to prove that not all pallies would wipe at Nazan. We went in, and after having to explain the marking system thrice, we mowed down Ramps without much difficulty. Well, except...

No problemo. I decided to AoE tank. The only form of CC (is it even called that?) I used was pet tanking, since the hunter couldn't trap to save his life. And so finally I used my blog's title. CC = Constant Consecration. Well, to be honest, not really. 1 or 2 consecrates should already stick them to me.

Now on to Nazan and his ugly rider. I've read some horror stories on Ramps, and I've noticed that their problem is mainly on Nazan. With a decent healer, it shouldn't be hard at all. First time we wiped because they didn't hold back their DPS. Second time it was suggested that I get its health down a bit before they would go all out on him. So I popped my seal of righteousness, and pulled the 2 orcs guarding Vazruden. As the only one left was on its last few percent of hp, I rushed inside, and immediately judged righteousness on Vazruden. I pulled him further back towards the middle for easy access on Nazan, and watched my screen for the descent message. Again, I immediately rushed to Naz - leaving DPS to deal with Vaz - judged, and the party waited for me to take a little bit of his hp. He stuck like glue till his death.

The key to this fight is to move a lot. I would strafe left and right on both fights, regardless on whether I was being burned or not. With this, you should take minimal damage every time Naz lets out that nasty fire breath. Don't stop. Move, move!

I'm quite satisfied with the result - as the first time wasn't a problem with my tanking, but with the much too early DPS. In the end, I asked the shaman whether he had changed his mind regarding pally tanking, and of course, I didn't get an answer back.

Amazing what a day full of wipes would do to your dedication...

First successful Outland instance!

Thanks for the encouragement guys, and indeed, I bounced right back and tried to run Ramparts and Blood Furnace again today. As always, put myself on LFG... and bam! invite sent. So there I went as a very anxious tank. My previous failure still haunted me, as I stepped through that swirly portal with increased dread. Group compromised of me, 2 mages, a shaman, and a hunter.

And alas, no wipe. Zilch. It all went as smooth as pie, laden with butter. Mmhmm. I couldn't believe it. Was the previous one a mere bad luck?

There were a few casualties, though, being one of the mages (salvation doesn't help), and me, twice. I still can't figure out how not to die at end boss. Or how to properly hold aggro on it. I would taunt, and then a few seconds later it would immediately turn its attention to DPS. Checked my omen meter... and seems like DPS and me are quite literally jumping up and down in position.

Ramps: Check.

Next: Ramps

Got an invited as a healer, so with minimal grumbling, I bought back the healing necklace I just vendored. I don't have any healing gears, so I told them as much, and the leader (a hunter) said, ”you don't have to heal me, just the tank."

Suuuuuuure.

Of course it wasn’t as ideal as that. Tank only has around 30% of damage taken, second most being the mage I ran with at BF failure run, who gains aggro like crazy even with salvation. Then I noticed that he opened with pyroblast literally a second after tank hits the mobs, or even before it. Told him to stop, and saw an improvement on healing done on him. Not bad. Rogue was tank #2 (unofficial). DPSing a lone mob or breaking sheep by yourself isn't funny. I thought of abandoning him to his own fate, actually, but oh, I’m not that egoistical to sacrifice DPS on a whim. Again, we managed to clear ramps without any wipe.

Yay me!

Ramps take 2: Success

Did a few more takes of BF and Ramps; with 3 wipes at the first one and 1 wipe at Ramps. I really can’t keep up with anyone’s HP at BF end boss; I would heal someone, then the next thing I know, somebody else went splat as the heal landed on my target. Then I would look down at their corpses, shake my head, and briefly die.

The wipe at Ramps was caused by me, sorry to say. I tried to pull a lone patrol before the boss, and, due to bad timing, ended up pulling the groups beside him. We went splat. After apologizing profusely to the group, we went on our way and killed Naz without any problem.

At the previous (fail) Ramps run, Slash was marking, and thankfully so. Seeing him do so actually made me learn a good few things about marking. In the end of the day, I quested with him and had a blast. Walk away defeated once – go back with vengeance.

Right now I’m levelling my one-handed mace skill up in STV. I got a Diamond-Core Sledgehammer on the (fail) BF run, and slapped a fiery on it for DPS. All in all, it’s been a great day, and to all the snide comments going on from my beloved friends: I’ll never spec holy, never!

...Maybe one day.

Wipe, Wipe, WIPE

I was excited this morning. "Finally got to do outland instance!" I thought. Boy, I was wrong. After a read through my brady guide book (oh well, that $50 better not get to waste. If only the shop boy wasn't that cute.) and some other sites for the general strategy for Blood Furnace and Ramparts, I immediately put myself on LFG with the message, "Prot pally - please PST before invite". Not more than a few minutes later, I got an invite - as the tank. We had a good group composition, me, a druid, a mage, a lock, and another pally (main healer). Things went... well, bad. We wiped. And wiped. And wiped. And wiped.

My total repair bill was 17g - does that say anything?

Somehow, we managed to get to last boss, but as he reached 10%, we began to drop like flies. After twice wiping on him, we disbanded. I got no blues.

Fast forward, ramparts with Slash the fury warrior, a shadow priest (main heal), a shaman, and a lock. First pulls went quite badly, as the shaman attacked the mob I marked for seduce. Because I didn't mark skull. In a pull of two. I'm sorry. I guess it's very not obvious that you should attack the unmarked mob in this pull of two. We need a big faaaarking skull above ze head every time. Zee comprehende?

Anyways, I did a few bad pulls too, mostly due to not knowing the layout of the place, and it's been a long while... So Slash got marking up. I guess I need to stop being lazy and start binding more than 3 raid marks.

So. We wiped. A lot. A helluvah lot. Sometimes it was the adds, once it was the beastmaster, quite a lot of times because ze heeeeeeeals didn't get to me on time (a few times I went splat when healer was on 80%-100% mana), but I think all of us had our fair share of mistakes there.

Both groups I went with are the type that you cannot pinpoint the mistake on. Both are good groups with fairly decent people, but somehow we just don't work. Whether it's the composition, our amateurism, or other x factors, we just don't work. I think it's the chemistry.

But for today, I failed as a tank. No, not in the aggro holding department (if it aggros DPS, then it's their fault. If it aggros healer, then it's because I died.), but in general working in group department.

Now that I've had a fair feel on the inside of BF and ramps, I hope I'll fare better next time. Learning those pulls really does go a long way.

I'll be back with more Outland greens, just you wait!

Total repair bill today: 24g.

Lesson of the day: Do NOT run an instance with your unfinished chemistry works on mind. You'd just fail.

Some things you just don't wanna know...

And I reckon you're feeling quite regretful on ever seeing this, eh? Some people just hurt my fragile senses...

Too good to rot away in my screenshot folder.

A word of advice, guys, we really don't need to know what's behind that 'brb bio' you typed. We'll just assume you smoked pot meanwhile, kay? Kay.

Farewell, Azeroth!

Finally, after 9 days /played and a gruesome battle against Altaholism, Shorsha hit 60 in Hellfire. Yeap, she finally got to Outland, and thankfully, still prot specced. After going through Azeroth contents god knows how many times, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a new one, and yesterday I demonstrated it by running around doing quests with much enthusiasm, something I hardly ever did while leveling 1-58. Thanks to the awesome green quest rewards. I just can't wait to see more plates! It's astounding, 2 levels after going through the portal, and my hp jumped from 4.3k to 5k, and mana from 2.6k to 3.3k. Plus, Shorsha gets to look A LOT better in her matching grey set, as opposed to the stupid blue leggings (no, not blue as in rare item, but blue as in blindingly sparkly blue color) she'd been sporting around Azeroth for quite a while with much shame.

Not all my Azeroth items went to the vendor, though. As my best friend through thick and thin, death and near deaths for 14 levels, I have proudly retired my Wall of the Dead into my bank. It did cost 150g after all - an amazing amount for a level 45 that I was. Now I proudly sport a landslide buckler to aid me in leveling.

On the other hand, I took a break from questing and began raising my first aid skill. It took around 2 hours to raise it from 60ish to 290. It freed a lot of bank space, and I get to sell all the left over cloth after that (20 stacks of silk? Ergh). Now I won't have any problem bubbling when my mana runs low.

Short-term goals:
- Get to 70.
- Do the epic charger quest. (200g to go.)
- Be proficient in one-hand mace.
- Stop hitting myself for not rolling a male BE.
- Stop littering my account with countless level 1 alts just because I like creating characters.
- Stop ogling over any male BE I come across.
- Just... stop this obsession for male BEs.

P.S Happy new year and (late) Christmas, and thanks to Slash for his one-man welcoming party to outland. I get to see how ugly your mount is :P