Petoholics Anonymous

An Army of Two

// June 16th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Non-hunters, Random Stuff

As you probably already know, I have a prot warrior called Tuyok who has been paired up with Kazi’s disc priest Ghislain. As a tank/healer combo, we’ve gone to a lot of randoms in order to level. We’ve seen all kinds of pugs, both good and bad. But the one great thing about these two is that they make DPS (at least at this level)…rather unnecessary. Both of us are good players (I’m trying not to toot my own horn too much) and with heirloom gear, we are rather overpowered.

After a series of frustrating pugs in Scarlet Monastery, one of us finally blurted out over Skype, “We could just do this damn thing all by ourselves!” There was a moment’s pause and then we began to discuss how, yes, we actually could duo the instance. With that, we ported to Undercity and booted it out to the dungeon.

Tuyok and Ghislain two-man Cathdral

Was it easier? Probably not. Was it faster? No, not really. But oh, was it ever fun. Without twitchy DPS breathing down my neck, I could get Kazi to bubble me and then pull the entire right side of the lower half of the Chapel Gardens. The pulls inside the Chapel itself were massive, with up to 20 mobs on me and runaways in every direction. We actually welcomed the additional mobs they brought back, myself especially because they only fueled my constantly depleting rage bar. I actually used my cooldowns to keep myself up.

You know what it felt like? Like for once, it was actually us against the mobs. With a pug, most of the time I’m more worried about what the rest of the group will do to screw things up, either by pulling aggro or pulling on their own. But here…I had a partner that I had complete trust in. I trusted him to keep me alive, to spam Holy Nova in the middle of a pack of mobs at the right time, to bring a mob aggroed onto him right to me so I could taunt it off, and to finish off the odd runner with Holy Fire.

Aroqin and Radoslaw take turns shanking an ogre

This sort of playing off each other has been repeated numerous times with us. Just take my kitty druid Aroqin and Kazi’s rogue Radoslaw. We’ll often position ourselves on either side of a mob, trading aggro back and forth between the two of us and using our special “shank them from behind” abilities when their back is to one of us. When we pull too many mobs, I switch into bear form and tank them while Kazi does, as he puts it, “terrible and possibly illegal things” to them. I have Healbot up for anytime I need to throw a quick Rejuv or Decurse onto one of us.

One of our most amazing quests was in STV. The quest was red to us and we didn’t even notice that it was until we were halfway into a deep cave, surrounded by mobs that were orange to us. Using a combination of stealth, distractions, and deadly attacks, we finally made it to the very back of the cave where the quest mob, also a red level, was waiting for us with his cronies. I turned into a bear and we pulled his buddies carefully when they had walked away from the quest mob. Then, we pulled the quest mob and he went down smoothly, even if it wasn’t quickly.

On the way back out, we decided to slip past all the orange-level mobs unnoticed. As a cat, Qin is stealthed better than Rado but she does not have his big bag of tricks. He distracted and sapped our way out of there, only fighting a couple of mobs when we absolutely had to. We would watch the way they were patting and would dash across through an opening as soon as we had the chance. We laughed and grinned at each other when we made it out and Kazi declared that it was the most fun he’s had on WoW in months. Why? Because it was just the two of us using our skills and experience to get something done.

Nalifi and Hyarima on the Zoram's Strand

We could be on any two characters and feel like we’re a real team, one that just knows what the other is doing and how best to act in conjunction with that. I mean, who would have thought that Kazi’s troll shaman Hyarima could have tanked most of a Deadmines pug at level, with my disc priest Nalifi bubbling and healing everyone? I’m not saying that we never make a mistake but we’re not the sort to never try anything beyond the ordinary. That trust that we have is what makes us work so well together and live through things by the skin of our teeth.

All of this brings something else to question. Why do we have to have a group of 5 for instances, with a tank, healer, and 3 dps? As much as I will preach how great the LFG tool can be, why must it be harder and less rewarding to get a mishmashed group of friends together to take on an instance? I distinctly remember completing Wailing Caverns with nothing but 3 hunters with tanking pets. Not to mention that I’ve pet-tanked heroic ToC without much difficulty. And I know that I’m not the only person that has brought this sort of issue to light.

Dear Blizzard, could we have a “queue with current party only” button? I mean really, who would we be hurting other than ourselves? We know what we would be getting ourselves into.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

// February 17th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Random Stuff

We’ve all heard the stories about pugs, even long before they implemented the new LFG tool. I’ll admit that I had never really pugged until the tool was introduced. If I wanted to do heroics, I just asked my guild and my friends to see who wanted to come along. More often than not, it was them convincing me to do some heroics. But since they added the LFG tool, I’ve been pugging a hell of a lot more.

There have been some bad ones, as I’m sure everyone has experienced. Xerin talked about some of his in the Ten Ton Hammer WoW newsletter, The Overpull. And poor Lodur over at World of Matticus has had some doozies.

My own experiences…well, I’ve had some interesting ones. Most often, we get that one dps who’s pulling 3-digit figures in Recount. But as long as they don’t start pulling mobs ahead of the tank, I usually don’t care. I’ve had a couple bad tanks or healers, including one that asked if our druid tank (aka my guild leader) had the right gear to be def-capped. (Pssst, druid tanks get all their defense from talents, ya moron.) He seemed to be having trouble healing the druid which I thought was strange because not only had I had no problem healing him before, but at the time he was also one of our best geared characters in the guild. And this was just H-CoS.

Surprisingly, I’ve had the worst experience with pugs that are below 80. For example, my little warrior Tuyok along with Kazi’s little warrior and another guildie on his druid decided to pug SFK. Kazi was the tank and our druid offered to heal but let us know that he had never done it before. A pugged pally that joined us was specced ret but said that she would heal because “i no wat im doing”. After some discussion, our druid ended up healing anyways. And he did a pretty good job all things considered. However, the paladin…kept pulling off Kazi somehow. For the entire instance. We still managed to make it to Argul without much incident. We nearly wiped on him because of some bad coordination but managed to kill him in the end. After the paladin had left group, we checked Recount just out of curiosity. Hand of Reckoning, which is the pally single target taunt, was 30% of her dps.

(more…)

And when you’re dead I will be still alive

// May 14th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Gripe, Non-hunters

(Yes, I am still hooked on the Portal song >.>)

The other day a member of Carpe Jugulum (a guild that Bloodriver has an alliance with) was leveling an alt and asked in our common channel is anyone had a character that they wanted to take to RFC. I remembered my dragonling pally Sarauku so I logged onto him and we both got started gathering the quests for that dungeon. In the end the group fell apart and I didn’t get my run that night but I rediscovered how much I love playing Saraku. So since then, I’ve basically been doing dailies on Niqora and then logging onto Saraku for the rest of the night.

While questing with him one of these nights, I got into LFG for Ragefire and merrily checked all the role boxes (even though he’s specced Prot, he can still heal and DPS at level 14, right?) It wasn’t very long before I was invited into a group of a warlock and a druid healer, who asked if I could tank. Which was perfect because I want to learn to tank on the dragonling. A rogue joins and then gets his shammy friend invited as well.

First pull in the instance…is not by me, but the rogue. Okay, whatever, maybe he stealthed a little too close. Only the next pull is the same. And the next. And the next. Not only that but I’m fighting for aggro with the shammy as well. This is my first time tanking and they’re not dying so I chalk it up to my inexperience. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong as I’m using Righteous Defense whenever I can but I keep going and don’t say anything.

Then the shammy yells out “AM I ONLY F***ING TANK IN THIS GROUP?” Which wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t iterated several times that I was going to be tanking. As I’m remembering why I don’t like pugging, I calmly respond with “I’m tanking but I’m having some trouble holding aggro against you.”

A couple minutes later, the rogue and the shammy are still pulling aggro from me but not as often. Well, I’ll take what I can get. Then the shammy has to leave. The rest of us decide to try and 4-man it. Now the rogue is really pulling everything, even if the healer has no mana. Does no one watch their healer’s mana bar? Then the rogue manages to pull a nice big group when neither the healer or me are ready. He takes a couple good whacks that bring his health way down and has the nerve to call for me for help. He manages to survive thanks to the quick thinking druid but I give him the warning “You pull it, you tank it.”

Of course that doesn’t stop him from pulling anyways but by this time, I’m getting pretty good at figuring out when to taunt and use my other abilities so I’m tanking most of the time. Nonetheless, I’m still getting really irritated by him.

We kill Bazzalan with only my poor dragonling dying (it was no one’s fault, the healer just had a lag spike) so I get rezzed and as I’m drinking and eating, I see the rogue sidle up to the ledge right over top of Jergosh. Oooooh, I can just see the tiny gears in his brain turning. He wants to jump right on top of Jergosh. Saraku’s bars are all full up so I walk over beside the rogue to peer down as well, and the rest of the group joins us.

Do you think the rogue asks if we should do this, or even asks me to go first? Nope, of course not. He stealths and jumps off the ledge. He’s lucky and lands without the boss noticing him. But he doesn’t wait for the rest of us, oh no. He attacks Jergosh and his two cronies all on his own. The druid and the warlock aren’t moving an inch so I’m not moving either. Then finally, right before the rogue dies, he asks for some help. Only then do I jump down and try to get aggro off of him but of course it’s too little too late and the rogue dies. And releases because he’s certain it’s a wipe without his pwnage.

We kill Jergosh and his pals. And between frantically clicking on mobs to make sure that the rest of us didn’t die, not only did I not notice that the rogue had released but I accidently right-clicked Jergosh’s corpse (in all honesty, I did not mean to).

All in all, Saraku got Subterranean Cape and quite a few greens which was nice. Personally, I had my first tanking experience…and got some first hand knowledge of what it’s like to be the tank of a crappy group. Oh well, tis life.

P.S. If all my references to “dragonling” are confusing, I roleplay Saraku as the humanoid version of Niqora’s netherdrake. He doesn’t have any uber powers or anything (just noting that for you RP natzis ) and he can’t transform back into a dragon while in Azeroth due to the lack of nether energies (although he amusingly turns semi-transparent at the most inopportune times. Makes for some great RP)