WoW

[Swordfish]

Get it now, it won't hurt, and you'll be ready for level 58 which is when you can officially jump through the Dark Portal. You can also go to the new starting areas if you want at any time.

Cool. Will do. Thanks!

[TerraPrime]

Billy, there should be no need for threat meters while questing. You're 70 with a pet, he's 61 fury, you're tanking.

True dat. He never pulled aggro from my pet. I was expecting him to, though, and hence the question.

Don't fucking help people with either your time or money. Info? Sure. Do not share XP with them for questing. Do not give them gold.

I'm a softie like that sometimes. If they ask nicely and if they sound sincere, I have a hard time saying no.

You want to be nice and give gold to someone who is in need? Donate to the 'repair Stegho's armor after next weeks US Kara run' fund. I hear that guy could use the help.

Just for that I'm gonna do the funky chicken dance while Flamewreath is on. Repeatedly.

[PhelanArcetus]

Ah, we downed Hydross. It feels good.

Of course, having to soft-reset the instance because someone decided to try running out of the instance to save his repair bill felt bad. Wait, it gets worse. He's a rogue.

I mean, ok, we declare it's a wipe, use Vanish. If Vanish fails like always, ah well, stuck with repairs. 20 minutes of dailies will get the money back easily. I take the time to remove weapon, shield, ranged weapon once a wipe is declared, and I run to a place where it's safe to be rezzed if someone has DI or a soulstone. I don't try to avoid my repair bill by running out of the instance.

And this guy has been known to do this in heroics when he has half the instance to run through to get away.

At the same time, a guildmate was in a pug SSC which was apparently a comedy of errors. The MT was in full level 60 epics except for two ZG blues. The only person up there with my guildmate's hunter in damage was a ret paladin (with top-notch gear). The raid had to be called when they got to Lurker and discovered that nobody had high enough fishing to summon him. Someone had to ask if they should use a shield while offtanking.

[RaceBannon42]

A Pug SSC...

Why even bother? I mean even in an organized raid there are issues with coordination. I cant imagine the chaos of a 25 man pug. It makes me ill just thinking about it. and full level 60 epics? WTF? did he even crack 10k health? Crazy.

Also how much does one wipe cost on leather? I'm in full epics, mostly mail some leather and a zero durabilty repair is under 40 gold so that under 4g per wipe. He has to be under 3 G

[RaceBannon42]

A bit of disaster with my warrior - my bags were totally full so I start vendoring a bunch of crap. I brag to Bannonn about my new upgrades and he is all...Ro...you have no weapons equipped. Somehow my weapons got unequipped AND I vendored them. I thought, no big deal, weapons? I have more! But...I never trained up axes. LOL, I did 1, yes ONE dps until I got it trained a bit more. So...lesson learned.

No Worries, my Huntard is imba enough to cover for ya

[Fez]

Well it's finals week, which meant after getting back from one at 10am I had the whole day with the nothing to do, so it's known what that means. It was an epic day for me getting all the way through 57 and hitting outland, and wow, I never the sky would look so cool, or that the dark portal was that big. And congratulatory whispers all around from guildmates and some friends.

I was planning on stop after that, but the temptation of trying out outland was too much. I grouped up with 2 guildmates in Hellfire, did about a dozen quests in a little over an hour and was surprised to discover I dinged 59. Xp really is easier; also you guys were totally right about gear. From quests I got a new cloak, staff, vest, and wand that are all INSANELY better then anything I had. Also had a nice druid staff as a random drop that requires level 57 to use, so I'm hoping some pre-outland druid pays way to much for it.

All in all...WooHoo!! Though the first time the ground started shaking I had no idea what was going on...until a fel reaver came up behind me and 1hitted me, that was whack. Those things are BIG.

Of course as it is finals week and I have my economics final tomorrow, that means no more WoW until after that, or at least not much of it.

[Minaku]

A Pug SSC...

Why even bother? I mean even in an organized raid there are issues with coordination. I cant imagine the chaos of a 25 man pug. It makes me ill just thinking about it. and full level 60 epics? WTF? did he even crack 10k health? Crazy.

Also how much does one wipe cost on leather? I'm in full epics, mostly mail some leather and a zero durabilty repair is under 40 gold so that under 4g per wipe. He has to be under 3 G

Pugging is fine. People have done it before, especially if a lot of those people are friends, not guildmates. But pugging something like SSC generally should happen after the gear progression for the server has caught up to it. Pugging Kara is fine. Pugging ZA is fine. You can pug Gruul's too, and if you know enough people with gear and raiding experience it's also possible to pug Mag. Back in the day I used to pug AQ20, MC, Ony, and ZG because my server's progression had gone far beyond those places.

Pugging like Phelan has described, with level 60 epics and a raid that doesn't know how to raid... um... Phelan, why did anyone go in the first place?

[Stego]

YEs, Ro, we MUZT.

[Relic]

i think i played about 100 arena games this last arena week. i MIGHT be getting better at it with my pally, too. which is cool, since being a holy pally in arena is pretty taxing. its all bout juking spells, los-ing various forms of CC and mana burns while casting non hots on your team mates. so far ive only been doing 2v2 and 3v3, tho.

gonna gear my druid into arena resto epixx so that hes geared by the time one of my buddies finishes lvling his lock. we plan on completely exploiting hots and dots in arena. all they'll see is two classes running away in circles and WINNING. haha, so cheesy.

[RaceBannon42]

All in all...WooHoo!! Though the first time the ground started shaking I had no idea what was going on...until a fel reaver came up behind me and 1hitted me, that was whack. Those things are BIG.

Heh. Getting ganked by the Fel Reaver is a rite of passage. Be glad he is walking and shaking now. I got to outlands right after patch 2.1 and one of the bugs was that the Fel reaver rolled rather than walked. So he'd actually sneak up behind you and gank your ass. It was awesome!

You do get to get revenge on him later as part of getting the shattered halls key so look forward to that.

59-60 are really fast. 60-70 takes a lot more xp. But grats on getting to Outlands man.

[Third Knight on the Left]

Heh. Getting ganked by the Fel Reaver is a rite of passage. Be glad he is walking and shaking now. I got to outlands right after patch 2.1 and one of the bugs was that the Fel reaver rolled rather than walked. So he'd actually sneak up behind you and gank your ass. It was awesome!

You do get to get revenge on him later as part of getting the shattered halls key so look forward to that.

59-60 are really fast. 60-70 takes a lot more xp. But grats on getting to Outlands man.

Are you guys playing without sound? Just curious. I've been in Hellfire since I dinged 58 and am less than 1k from 60 and havn't been hit by one of those dudes yet, they seem pretty obvious. *shrug*

I dropped mining for enchanting, my mining would have needed another 50 points to get outland ores. I leveled Enchanting up to 250 and am going to stop leveling activly till 70, so this will be my new gathering profesion. I think it will be profitable.

[Fez]

Are you guys playing without sound? Just curious. I've been in Hellfire since I dinged 58 and am less than 1k from 60 and havn't been hit by one of those dudes yet, they seem pretty obvious. *shrug*

Well it only happened the one time because I had no idea what was going on. I heard the sound and saw the ground shake, but I thought it was just an effect like the fire that was shooting from the ground near where I was killing the redskinned orcs, then I all of a sudden died. No had told me about fel reavers, after I died and before I released my spirit I saw this giant metal thing, so I went to wowwiki and looked it up to see what the hell had killed me. No trouble since then with 'em.

[RaceBannon42]

TK, If its your first time in hellfire and dont know what the fel reaver sounds like, its not hard to get killed. And as I said in my post he was bugged for a brief period and did not make noise and shake the ground.

[PhelanArcetus]

Pugging is fine. People have done it before, especially if a lot of those people are friends, not guildmates. But pugging something like SSC generally should happen after the gear progression for the server has caught up to it. Pugging Kara is fine. Pugging ZA is fine. You can pug Gruul's too, and if you know enough people with gear and raiding experience it's also possible to pug Mag. Back in the day I used to pug AQ20, MC, Ony, and ZG because my server's progression had gone far beyond those places.

Pugging like Phelan has described, with level 60 epics and a raid that doesn't know how to raid... um... Phelan, why did anyone go in the first place?

In general on my server, pugging ZA is not a good idea. Too many of the so-called tanks and healers are categorically insufficient for the trolls on bears. Ony pugs never got off the ground due to coordination. As in, they rarely made it out of Ironforge.

Actually, my luck with pugs is such that I'm often afraid to even try and pug a heroic. Get a pug 5th, or even 4th and 5th, when I've got a tank and healer included, yes. Go find 4 people I don't know? Not really. I don't enjoy dying futilely.

I don't know why other people went; I think my guildmate went to see the content and laugh at people. He was laughing at people and linking their bad loot (a tank with a green throwing weapon of spirit, also) to us well before pulls started. And I should ask him if that tank was at least in tier 2 or if it was full MC gear.

[Stego]

Running fucking late. Going to miss the fucking Arena for this week. fucking pissed about it.

Fucking quitting my job -- need more WoW.

[TerraPrime]

So last night, we decided to PUG Botanica, because we need the key fragment, the rep, and it sounds like fun. Kal, Carrie, and I, got another warlock and a druid bear tank, so Kal was on healing duties.

First, WTF is wrong with lvl 70s who tank without threat meter? Seriously. WTF? I hate having to guess when to back off DPS, or when to start, or what the hell fuck is going on with that mob's aggro. Idjits.

That ought to have been our first sign.

Second, the tank was way too over-confident. On the first boss, I suggested we keep the healer elite add-on feared or cc'd, and he said, no, not a problem to tank all 5. So we did that, and wiped instantly when the adds showed up.

On the second go, he agreed that I should cc the healer. Okay. So I tried, but I couldn't get the right mob targeted quick enough (they're in a group and I had to tab through each one and see if it's the right one). By the time I pulled the elite healer, the tank was down, but the two locks and Kal finished the boss and the other 3 adds. Unfortunately, I died. I didn't FD because I didn't want Kal to get pummeled. Kal tried his best to take down the healer elite but she's healing too fast. So we wiped. At least the boss was down.

Onward to second part. The tank now wants some CC. Good! Then the first time he asked me to trap the other 'lock dotted the trap target and broke CC. Okay, live and learn. We managed through the trash, and got to the second boss. We were in the middle of discussing the strategy and somehow ended up with "just kill everything." Okay. Of course, we didn't have enough DPS to take down the treant adds so the boss kept healing himself. The tank didn't know to pull the treants away, we had discussed no strategies on taking the adds, and it was a fucking mess. We wiped, and called it a night.

Oye fey.

The positive news is that despite all of that, I still managed 560 dps on the raid.

So, we'll have to do Botanica again. Yup.

[Slurktan]

First, WTF is wrong with lvl 70s who tank without threat meter? Seriously. WTF? I hate having to guess when to back off DPS, or when to start, or what the hell fuck is going on with that mob's aggro. Idjits.

I'd say people who do that don't bother with it because it isn't necessary and mods are annoying to some people. It's a tool invented somewhat recently into WoW(in the grand scheme of things); raiding and instancing went fine before threat meters were around and go fine afterwords if they aren't involved. It is a tool for people who don't want to watch parts of the game other than their character. Which is fine and all but let's call a spade a spade. As for guessing when to start... It should be obvious when to start on a mob depending on what kind of tank you are dealing with.

[Relic]

terra - misdirect if yer afriad of aggro =P

threat meters are more for raiding then instancing, imo. i dont pay attention to mine outside of raids at all

[TerraPrime]

Re: Slurktan

It is a tool for people who don't want to watch parts of the game other than their character.

How do you mean? What should I be watching to see if, for instance, that the healer is next up in aggro after me and the tank, so if the tank dies, I can't FD because then the healer buys the farm? Sometimes I am above the healer, and sometimes I'm not. If the next on aggro is the offtank and he needs to pick up the mob, then I should FD. How would I judge that without a threat meter? Do I just guess?

Also, how would I know if I am over-taking the tank's aggro? Maybe s/he got a resist taunt? Maybe s/he pushed the wrong button? Are there graphics or texts that I am missing because I've been using threat meters since lvl 12?

Which is fine and all but let's call a spade a spade. As for guessing when to start... It should be obvious when to start on a mob depending on what kind of tank you are dealing with.

I know that when I solo with my pet, I rely on the meter because not all mobs take the same damage so the aggro build up is different. Some mobs I need to let the pet growl twice, others only once, before I can start hitting. A lvl 63 pet hitting a 62 mob versus a 65 mob is also different. If I open on the same number of hits in all cases, I would be grabbing aggro in quite a few cases. I just assumed that this is about the same with tanks, that mob differences and other factors make it less reliable to just count the number of hits, etc.

I know I started this game with threat meter and that's how I play, so I know that I am biased. But I just find that it is such a useful add-on and that it takes so little to use that it's quite silly to not run it, especially when you're tanking and you don't want your DPSers to grab aggro.

[Third Knight on the Left]

Best tank I've played with doesn't have a threat meter. *shrug*