Phelanar of Eonar

So, even once I stopped playing WoW, there was always the urge to go back for one reason or another. To see the new content, to pwn people in PvP, or just to sit around and chat and talk shit with people in guilt chat. Even during the 8-9 months I've been away from WoW, I've been forced to admit to myself that if I were given good enough reasons, I'd probably go back. This weekend, that pretty much changed for good. I got on a friends account, made some characters, and went looking for people I knew on the game to talk. And they're all just gone. I found a few people, but not many. Some transferred, some changed their names, some both transferred ~and~ changed their names, and a lot quit the game entirely. Things weren't the same anymore and I couldn't bring myself to go back to a game and more or less have to start over in making friends, earning a spot in a new raiding guild, etc, etc. All without the people who I played nearly 3 years with. So it's official. Goodbye World of Warcraft. I had a hell of a good time, but it's time I really closed the door on my playing days. Maybe I'll MMO again someday, like with the Warhammer MMORPG. If I do, I've got this place to write about it. But this is the last I expect that I'll be writing about World of Warcraft. It's been fun.

I miss Holy Carnage. I don't miss World of Warcraft terribly much. But I miss my friends.

So, late last night after we got out of Karazhan, which I'll talk about later, we went off to hit Mechanar. Nothing special. Until you realise the group. Resto shaman is main healing and has been to Mech all of one time before, holy priest DPSing, me (your lovable Hunter Hero), a pug pally who kept going afk, and a hardcore resto druid who had respec'd tanking feral that very night and had never MT'd any instance. It was...interesting. And ugly. I had to lead. Why me? I have no fucking idea. People just like me to lead. I think it's because they secretly know I hate it. What's wrong with me leading is that I've done all of ~3~ full Mechanar runs myself. And I'm somehow the voice of experience and wisdom. This should scare you as much as it scares me. We ditch the pally fairly quickly, because holy fuck he was a thick skulled idiot. We got a pug rogue from a good guild. And it was still a bit ugly, because taking a druid who was teased for how little she shifted forms and then asking her to learn by tanking in Mech is clearly like being thrown to the wolves. But we got the first boss after a couple of tries and slowly things got smoother. The tanking got better and things just generally calmed down. It was still pretty ugly. We wiped on the second boss and quite nearly should have wiped twice. But we got through it and didn't call it off. Of course, I got crap. But that's par for the course in Mech. I need two damned drops in there and neither of them ever drop. Oh well. I'll just go again another time.

Also, finally got into a Kara raid last night. Not a full clear, but got in nonetheless. The raid was on the Opera Event, which was Romulo and Julianne, which is very much based on Romeo and Juliet, if you hadn't noticed. It's a really cool event. Lots of voice acting and drama. And you're doing it on a theatre stage. Complete with audience. That being said, it's a cast iron bitch of a boss. There's three phases. First phase is just Julianne by herself. Not hard. She does some holy DPS attacks and tries to heal herself, but overall not difficult. Second phase is Romulo. He's harder as he hits like a freaking truck. And has a cleave, so rogues hate him (and I don't like it either, since I can't use my pet). Third phase is the hard part of the fight. You have to fight both of them at once. Romulo, ironically, isn't the difficult part here. It's Julianne, who nukes the crap out of everybody all while attempting to heal herself and Romulo. We wiped a few times. We think our strat is sound, just need to get practice.

Which brings me to the last part. The trash in Karazhan fucking blows. Seriously, 30-45 minute respawns on trash. Trash who are ~really~ hard. I died twice in the first three pulls (on the ushers) and I'm not a scrub raider by any means. Nor am I severely undergeared (I was averaging about 9000hp fully buffed last night and broke 10000hp at one point), but I got fucking ripped. So hard trash that respawns fast. Fucking lame. So you get two, maybe 3, attempts and then have to reclear.

I had a thought earlier today about playing a Hunter. Well, actually, it's a thought that's been in proto-form for a while, but kind of crystalised earlier.

When you play Hunter and get a random invite for a group, you're never really sure if it's because they think that you're a good player or because they're desperate for someone to fill the last spot.

Okay, I can see some of the questions that might arise from such a statement. Like...why? Well, the first reason is that Hunters are really common. They always have been. And when there's a glut of something, it's always hard to stand out. The second thing is the common perception that Hunters are idiots from a large portion of the playing population. Generally an unfair assumption, to be sure, but still one that is pervasive and you can't really get away from. These things add up to a lot of second guessing about why some random person would invite you to their group.

Now, as for me, I was being invited to Heroic Durnholde which sparked this whole round of thinking. So I don't think it's because they were desperate. You're not going to invite some utter stranger for a Heroic instance. Especially not an instance as difficult as Heroic Durnholde. So they were probably reasonably sure that I was a good player and genuinely wanted me along. That being said, that little feeling of doubt is always still there.

That's part of what it's like to play a Hunter. Even when you know you're a good player (and despite not wanting to pat myself on the back too much, I am a good player), you're infected with a seed of doubt merely by the perception from the majority of players regarding your class. And everybody else is given that same hint of doubt.

So, now that I've done all my productive stuff here at school, time to write about instancing last night. First was the Mana Tombs pug. I've already detailed that I put on a freeze trap clinic last night and I did. What I didn't go into was everything else about the run. The tank, specifically. The tank was a moron. He could tank reasonably well, don't get me wrong, but he was still a moron. Okay, background first. Standard freeze trapping procedure while in an instance (as far as I'm concerned) amounts to letting the tank pull, then peeling off the assigned mob to a place that's away from the group, either off to the side or behind. This is important, for a couple of reasons. The first being that he continually set up to pull in places that were not easy to lay down traps away from the group. And the second being that he kept forgetting to come and pick up the freeze trapped mob. He'd either just sit there and let me tank it (usually) or start to go set up for the next pull. He did this a half dozen or more times over the course of the run, with the smart money being on "more". His excuses for this? Varied and stupid.

"i was looking at my bags"
"lol u rape casters"
"i was alt tab"
"lol im stoned"

Among others. We did managed to clear the instance except for the escort quest despite our idiot tank, even if it did take forever to do so and I wanted to beat the snot out of him every other pull. We wiped once on the last boss and once on the escort quest (again, because of the tank, though for a different reason), but overall I got a new pair of boots (which I need to enchant), a lot of rep (I'm friendly with Consortium now), and an assload of experience.

Speaking of experience, only about 330k more to level 70. I've been pushing hard. Doing a lot of quests, instances, etc. Almost have enough for my flying mount, even. Sitting at around 800g, pending some things on the AH. And if I can get a few more quests done, I'll have enough for the mount as I hit 70. I might not have much money left over, sure, but that can be remedied with more quests and some grinding. I may just do some questing before buying the mount so I have a little bit of a buffer and don't have ~10g or less.

Generally, I'm not one to blow my own horn too loudly. But tonight, I was fucking amazing. I put on a Master class exhibition of how to Freeze Trap tonight in Mana Tombs. Seriously. I was our groups ~only~ CC option and I did it so well that every pull was virtually one less mob. I very much doubt that there's anybody who could have done this better. As well, probably, but better, not likely. Of course, my reward for this masterful job was no acknowledgement from anybody about how great a job I was doing. But it was a PUG, so that's to be expected, though I think they'd be more than a little unpleasantly surprised at how hard it would have been to do that instance with most other Hunters. But anyway, we did finish. We did wipe once on the final boss. I got 2 quests finished, a new set of boots, and a metric assload of experience and rep, so ultimately despite our idiot tank (which I'll get into more tomorrow) it was a fairly successful run for me. I also got Sethekk Halls done which, again, I'll write about tomorrow. Until then, I need sleep and badly.

So, I was running around Terokkar last night, working on a couple of quests. Over in the Tomb of Light, specifically. And there was a group quest. I wasn't going to try it, as at this point most group quests are more than I can handle solo, if only just barely. But there's this BElf pally there. And he's clearing mobs. And almost at the same time, I think we come up with the same idea. Work together to do the group quest. We can't communicate and we can't buff/heal each other, but two decent players (and I'm much more than decent, tyvm) should be able to handle it, right? And surprisingly, we did exactly that. It was a bit hairy when we started the last part of the quest event, when we were getting waves of mobs, but managed to get by without too much trouble. And it was actually pretty fun. Working with someone who not only was a total stranger, but who I couldn't communicate with at all.

Also, dinged 66 earlier today. Started questing in Nagrand. Still have a group quest or two in Terokkar and I still haven't done a single instance there (which is getting really lame), but I'm starting to move on. This weekend I hope I can get Mana Tombs and Crypts done.

Echoes of War quest ~finally~ done. It's kind of a pain in the ass. Until you do this quest, you cannot get any T3 armor. Becuase T3 is all quested and token based. It's not a bad idea exactly, but clearing trash sucks. A lot of Naxx trash isn't terribly fun. I'm looking at you, Abom and Plague wing trash. The Abom wing trash is a freaking hour+ clear to even get to the mobs. The Plague wing trash you need to kill just fucking sucks. The first time you clear, not a big deal. Because you're probably going to want to play with each of the 4 first bosses when you first start in Naxx to see which you want to work on killing first. I missed this point with HC. My PC was, at the time, dead and I was rather burned out on HC anyway. And our guild/raid leader decided not to work on Patchwerk, so I've never had a chance to finish the quest until yesterday. I don't even want to get into the frustration with that. I was likely passed over for T3 on Tuesday because I hadn't ifnished the quest and thus couldn't cash in the item. And it wasn't my fault. It's not like I could go finish the quest on my own. But because the guild/raid leader didn't want to clear trash for the guild, I couldn't finish. And I'm pretty certain that I didn't get my T3 item off Faerlina becuase of it. But it's done now and with any luck I'll get the shoulders item this week as we're working on Patchwerk this week. Cryptstalker Shoulders are hot.

I'm ticked that there's been ~no~ Hunter or Druid info for Burning Crusade, but other classes are not only getting talent trees and new skills, but they're getting previews of new armors and weapons. The only hunter related item I've seen so far has been a Hunter legendary, which is admittedly so. fucking. sweet. that I nearly wet myself with joy. 66.4 DPS, +27 agility, +1% crit, +2% hit, -10% attack speed, chance on hit to coat an arrow with ice, doing ~190 damage and slowing movement and attack speed by 35%. But that's been it. The only nugget of info for Hunters so far.

Eonar being down for 36 hours = the suck. I should go play on Kirin Tor, but tonight i'm too tired. I'm also not looking forward to getting another character through that 30-40 level range. I only just now escaped it with my Warlock. >_< I like my Druid though, and have been neglecting terribly. I guess it's because I want to get my Warlock to 60 so I can raid.

It seems that worldofwarcraft is turning more into a carbon copy of the official forums every day. PvPers thinking that they're the hottest shit ever. Horde thinking that they're the best thing since sliced bread. Hideously oversensitive people who cry at the drop of a hat if you say something they don't agree with. People who hate the game and hate playing it, but never stop bitching about it. Actual trolls that run wild, while people who just disagree with other people are labelled as trolls. The worst offenders are people like lane who whines incessantly about everything, is constantly emo, and in a lot of ways justifies the "QQ" people that I normally despise. I'm rapidly getting tired of the community because it's too much like the cesspool of stupidity that is the official forums.

Not a lot else going on in WoW. I enjoy cross-server BGs. When they work. Which they don't often do. Last night I tried to get into about 6 BGs. Only one of them did I get in without any real issues. The others had various bugs and those bugs apparently just got worse today. Most of the other 1.12 changes don't affect me too much, honestly. The EPL buff is kinda nice, but it seems bugged. But in a good way, which means that it'll be nerfed to hell and back again within hours. The actual world pvp seems really lame and most people don't really care about it. The buff isn't so good as to get people to PvP over it.

And servers are still so utterly borked that it's really making people angry. We should be working on Maexxna in Naxxramas and 3 bosses should be dead. Instead, just 1 boss is dead and that was just done through sheer stubbornness. But lag makes many encounters in Naxx undoable. Or many other instances for that matter. So it's frustrating. We're not the only ones having problems, either, not many guilds at all on Eonar have had successful raids this week for lag reasons.

Not much else to speak of, really. It's just business as usual, if you don't count the borked servers.

I haven't done a screenshot post lately. Man, I don't even remember hte last time I did one actually. I think it was when I got full DS, or maybe when we got C'Thun to phase 2. In any case, I'm overdue. These will have to do for now. I haven't taken a ton of good screens lately and some of the ones I took I put in a zip file, so I need to go looking for some of the more recent ones.

( Collapse )