Category: Gaming

Last night I headed in for two random dungeons along with two guild mates, and we had a blast. One of them is a little lower level, so we weren’t doing anything incredibly difficult, and he got a few gear upgrades which is always nice. Afterward myself and the 80 warrior decided to play in some ‘big kid’ zones, where I experienced one of the most frustrating things in LFD yet.

As a tank and healer combo there’s rarely ever a wait when it comes to LFD – even when selecting the dungeon. We decided to head to The Forge of Souls, which is not that difficult – unless you end up in a grp like I did. The first give away that it was not going to be a particularly pleasant trip was that the three other DPS were all from the same guild. So that left myself (priest) and my guild mate (tank) unable to vote anyone out since they certainly were not going to vote their own guild mates out of a group. Now, you can hate on gearscore all you want but one thing it DOES tell me, is how difficult of a time I’m going to have healing in a zone. That is not to say that someone with a higher GS is going to perform better (because that has certainly not been the case) but it DOES tell me how easy group members are going to DIE when they get hit with things.

The second give away was that one of the three DPS was an incredibly under geared warrior, who had never been there before. The two guild mates were explaining the fights as they went along. No problem, it was my first time too after all.

What I had a problem with was that they won every single piece of plate gear, and did 400 dps for the zone which is an abysmal amount for a DPS warrior. I really dislike gearing up other people’s characters like that. Run the instance with your own tank and healer instead of queuing with nothing but DPS from your guild. My heal parse was 2k for the zone which is a lot higher then it typically is when I’m running an instance. I felt as though I was healing a group of cloth wearing group mates instead of a rogue warrior, and shaman.

The instance was completed without any deaths, which is always good in my opinion but it was incredibly stressful to heal. I went through a lot of mana potions and while I pride myself on having done a good job, it still irks me that in instances it’s only too easy to ‘pull’ an under geared badly played character through so that they can obtain loot. I know, I could have left (along with the warrior) but in most situations I’d rather just tough it out. It was also nearing 2am and I just wanted to get the instance done with and move on.

Aside from the group aspect, the dungeon was fun. It unlocks another dungeon, and then that one unlocks a third. I should be saving up emblems for some gear for myself, but since I’m always bouncing around characters I’ll probably use it for the alt army and get heirloom instead. We’ll see.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

I finally hit level 80 yesterday on my first ever character in world of warcraft. I was pretty excited to get there – and then once I was there I looked around wondering ‘what now?’ The thing is I don’t know anyone on my server. Thanks to the LFD tool there’s no reason to actually talk (or even group) with anyone, and there’s rarely anyone in my dungeons from my own server any how. I don’t belong to a raid guild, and I don’t know anything about ‘end game’ in world of warcraft, aside from it being a gear grind. Manos has been 80 for a little while now, and had a few suggestions for me. I’m obviously not geared well enough to go jumping into heroic dungeons, even though I do have some available to me.

What we did for the majority of the night was run the Trial of the Champion instance, which is a three part ring event that rewards one epic loot the first round, two the second, and two the third. It’s notorious for it’s trinkets – and bad groups. It seems like after 2am EST all of the groups went significantly down hill. I suppose that’s to be expected on a Thursday night, but I wasn’t prepared for it.

There was the group that wanted to vote someone out simply because they had never been there before. One incredibly impatient person started the event before the new 80 even had time to know what was going on, and then he spent the next little while dying through no real fault of his own. The impatient person screamed for him to be voted off, and in fact a second member of the group /spit on the new player. I decided this was not a group I wanted to heal for, because lets face it I’m just as new, and I left.

The first event can be confusing for any new player. You’re required to grab a lance from the sidelines of a huge arena, and then mount up on a warhorse. The main event is jousting, and you’ve got to run around charging the enemy and knocking them off of their mounts. If players know what they’re doing it can be quite fun, and it’s relatively painless. If you notice your mount is dying the best thing to do is to move to the sidelines and grab a fresh one. A few times I didn’t get there in time and once my mount ‘died’ I was pummeled to death by the enemy, which wasn’t fun. The revive point is very close by, thankfully.

The second event compromises of two different names, it’s random which one you get. The female encounter is the more difficult of the two, but the male is quite simple, you just have to face the other way while he’s blinding everyone. Literally, look towards the wall.

The last encounter is great if you’ve got the dps, and painful if you do not. Since this is one of the entry level dungeons for level 80, you’ll end up with a lot of under geared players very easily.

Needless to say, I started the evening with a gs (gear score) of 2700 and ended with a 3250 or so. Ideally, I’d like 4-5k – and higher than that requires raiding. I ran the instance 6-7 times, and obtained three pieces of gear. A huge upgrade over what I had been wearing, though it quickly became too late for me to test it out and see if dungeons were any easier. I’m attempting to gather shards for both gear (myself) and heirloom (the alts) and in the mean time I’m pondering creating an alliance character on another server simply to experiment with that side of things. I’d rather it not be on my ‘regular’ server because – well because (for those who don’t know, I play on Ravenholdt). That will require some research on my end, maybe I can find myself a good home.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.