WoW has done the impossible - it made me pray for Saimhain to come and go as soon as possible.

[sparkindarkness]

Because I am sick to the back teeth of the bloody headless bloody horseman. My druid took one look at the loot tables and announces “screw you too” before writing yet another angry letter to blizzard reminding them that feral druids do exist, oh, and that doesn’t mean we can just wear crappy rogue gear, ok? My Mage looked, sniffed and announced he had better. My shammy went on 2 runs, got all the rings he needed and was happy.

Exceeeept, druid is tank and shammy is healer

Oops: side rant time: To the nice Resto Druid who smugly pointed out how high he was up the healing meter {did I mention how much I hated damage meters and all their ilk?}he was last Karazan. Yes, you were. But I had an Earth Shield on the tank at all times that heals him of 750 health every time he’s hit, a healing stream totem out that heals the whole party of 120 health every 2 seconds {and that’s not including bonus from your tree of life aura) and a stoneskin totem out that reduces all damage taken by 43. And you know what’s fun? I do all this healing without the tiniest blip on any threat generator! The healing meter is baaad at recording these things, but screw the meters. Besides, every time anyone lost so much as a millimetre of health you dropped a lifebloom on them. I have no instant cast heals and I’m not going to drop a lesser healing wave on someone who has lost a small amount of health and has 3 lifeblooms ticking away. Sure I’d climb the meter, but I’d also be wasting mana and overhealing. And while we’re at it, when we’re in the same group as 2 tanks and a rogue and we’re having NO problem healing I’m, going to drop a Grace of Air totem, NOT a Wrath of Air totem to give us more unnecessary healing power, ‘kay thanks. Both tanks having an extra 79 agility will benefit us anyway.


Anyway, as I was saying, I have a tank and a healer in a guild (hells, a server) that lacks both. Which means every fury warrior (in fact, every warrior), rogue, caster et al in the guild has been dragging me along for their uber drops - especially that bloody helmet. After killing him 2 dozen times it grows raaaather tiresome.

And everyone has a debuff saying they’ve been trick-or-treated which I waste hours on in raids trying to cure (it’s instinctive, see debuff, try to dispel) and everyone looks very similar because they’ve all got stupid pumpkin heads and hey, at least the debuffs aren’t wasted because they’re ALL throwing up from damn tricky treats. Oh and every now and then some guildies with the snese of humour of a sick toad on prozac will use a damn costume on me stopping me from fight/healing. The broomsticks are the only saving grace and that’s only because if I’ve got an idiot whizzing over my head and I can always say “I always knew you wanted to sit down on a long firm rod” and watch the spluttering horror. Childish, yes. But sometimes childish is fun.

Comments

[harald387.livejournal.com]

As a resto shaman (I've been one of the guild's top healers for a while now) I've had to calmly point out to the guild that my position on healing meters is no real indication of how well I'm doing. Fortunately, I'm helped by the fact that I'm one of the guild's officers, which gives my words a certain weight.

That, and our fun little toy which tracks critical spellcasts and announces them to the guild recently announced an 11k Healing Wave for me, and after that everyone shut the hell up.

I actually stopped logging on for most of the last week of the Headless Horseman event to avoid being asked to go heal it. The rings, for the record, are identical to rings already in game:

Witches Band = Band of Halos (a Heroic Badge Turnin)
Ring of Ghoulish Delight = Eye of the Stalker, (available from Heroic Underbog)
The Horseman's Signet Ring = Cobalt Band of Tyrigosa (available from Heroic Mana Tombs).

If anyone's complaining about not having gotten their rings, point out that they can run heroic dungeons for them. Yeah, the horseman was easier, but heroics have more loot.

In any case, I'm glad the stupid event is over. One other note on Karazhan - if you're not having any trouble keeping your tanks alive, try using Windfury Totem (and remind your Rogues to remove the poison from their main-hand weapons) instead of Grace of Air, assuming the tank is a warrior or paladin. The extra threat the Windfury procs will generate for the tank is valuable, and there is flat-out no melee DPS buff in the game that beats Windfury. I spend most of my time in melee groups because of how insanely powerful Windfury is, and it trumps Wrath of Air by a significant amount. Tell your healing Druid to get a brain; Wrath of Air won't add much to his instant casts anyway.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm shaman class leader I just say "oh? I'm not needed. Shall I HS?" to which everyone says "NOOOOO HEROISM! GIEB HEROISM!" And totems of course, but they love heroism.

The rings are identical but they're a damn lot easier to get from the hedless horseman than they are through more conventional means.

The problem (and it annoys) with heroics I find is that everyone wants to go to THEIR pet heroic. Because we farm karazan most people can't be bothered to go to heroics unless there's a single item they want that they know there's no better in kara (my druid wants the Treemenders belt from heroic ramparts, for example. But he always wants over 200 badges for the next patch, so he'll go anywhere). So in guild chat you have endless "LF2m, heroic X" usually 3 or 4 at a time. People won't even farm rep to go to a heroic they don't want


In karazan Group 1 is usually both tanks (prot warrior and feral druid), any melee dps (to get feral druid's boost) and USUALLY the resto druid (for his aura) and/or a warlock (impy goodness) because their buffs are USELESS anywhere else. In the absence of either it's me or a paladin in group 1 buffing the tanks. I'm in group 2 with the other healers, the shadow priest (giving mana regen galore) and the damage dealing casters.

Personally i prefer to be with the tanks - my healing stream totem is too good to be wasted as a mana stream totem.

Occasionally I'm in group 1 when we have a LOT of casters in which case I drop Grace of Air. Windfury is immense (I use it in heroics) but grace is good for rogues, hunters and druids (we always have a druid offtank) and gives dodge rating and armour. If people pull agro... well, they all have ktm. It's their repair bills if they can't read a coloured bar :)

Oh and the TIMES I've told rogues to take off their poisons "buuut" NO, no but, keep it on your opffhand,. You do NOT have a poison as good as windfury. I even had a fury warrior who kept using his weightstones.

[soappuppy.livejournal.com]

My undergeared mage and hunter alts, who never get to go anywhere, screamed "FREE EPIX!!" like the noobs they are, and now have one, exactly one, purple item each.

My dr00d, who is feral, squeed at having a nice healing ring to go in her healing set...and then died of boredom running Horseman 2,000,000 times to get a damn helm for every warrior and pally in the guild. My god.

Fie on the creators of the various meters. The healing meter just makes healing even more work than it is now, because now it is a competition as well as "If you fuck up the tank dies and we all wipe!" (no pressure, eh?); and the DPS meters just encourage idiots to pull aggro and die. Evil, evil meters. Who cares about fine detail? If we're all (or mostly) alive at the end of the fight, that's what matters.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I think hjalf the guild screamed the same thing, especially those who had just power levelled to 70 than sat in a corner whining "when are you taking us to Karazan?" *slaps them*

Exactly what my druid did, except, becaue I have a resto shaman, I didn't even want a healing set (if I ever heal, i switch characters)


Oh I hate meters (well, except threat). No, I tell a lie. I hate the general use of them. In our guild the raid leader uses one so he can spot any problems (we had one new healer who didn't realise he's supposed to help heal all 10 people, not just the 5 in his group - who were all casters and not in combat. We had a retri pala who turned out to be dfecked out in fury gear. We had a rogue who'd just respecced to daggers from swords but had no dagger skill - KICKED from raid, thank you)

Exactly! Nightbane is DEAD. We're NOT. Does it matter who did the most damage/got the killing blow/healed the most?

[meridae.livejournal.com]

I have two things to say to this post:

1. I play WoW and I pretty much have no idea what half the things you said meant

and

2. I think I missed out on most of the Samhain experience in the game, cos I don't know what you're talking about there either. I did try and put the fires out when the Headless Horseman set Goldshire on fire, and I'd sometimes run around wearing a mask or something, but really that's about it.

Get the feeling I'm not quite experiencing the full potential of this game somehow.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Weeeeel, you have to play different classes to know the idiosyncracies of them. The headless horseman was a hallowe'en event and you could only kill him if you were lv 70 (actually it took 5 of you)

I assume you know what tank/healer/dps means :) WoW junkies must know :)

There is a lot of high level content that you need to reach 70 to see and the experience of REACHING 70 gives a lot of insight

[meridae.livejournal.com]

Weeeeel, I know a tank is something/someone who draws all the aggression from the monsters - for example, my voidwalker looks tastier to the monsters than my warlock and I try and keep it that way. A healer is like the druid or priest, right, that can continually heal you as you fight . . . but I never quite worked out what a dps is, although my hunter seemingly now has a pet cat who is one. Teehee.

So far I think I've pretty much at least dabbled in most of the classes except priest and shaman I think. I like Warlock and Mages a lot, although my current favorite is my hunter . . . I like the ones where you stand waaaay back to kill things and don't have to get in up close and beat the shit out of them like the warriors do.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Bssically it applies mainly in instances more than anywhere else - because the mobs in instances are TOUGH and cannot be soloed and have to eb taken by a balanced group

Tank: as you said, holds agro like your voidwalker does. They have to be able to gather a lot of threat so the monsters stay on them AND they have to be extremely tough (lots of health/armour/shield block/dodge/defence etc) so the mobs don't hurt them. In instances there are mobs that can and will one shot non-tanks so tanks ahve to make sure they are never hit. Feral Druids, Protection Paladins and Protection Warriors are tanks.

Healer: as it says on the tin. They keep the tank (and the rest of the group if they get hit) alive. Essential and vital. Restoration Druids, Restoration Shamans, Holy Paladins and Holy/Discipline Priests are healers.

DPS: Means "damage per second." Basically these classes do a LOT of damage. While the tank holds the mobs in place and the healer keeps them alive, these are the ones who bring it down and kill it quickly (tanks and healers usually do very little damage). Just about every class has a dps specification. Some classes are pure dps: Mages, warlocks, rogues, hunters

Other important ones (in my book) are:
Crowd control: classes (usually dps classes) that can also hold one of the monsters still so they can sit the battle out. They turn a nasty 6 man pull into a fun and easy 3 man pull. Rogues, Mages and hunters are great at CC. Priests and Warlocks are against certain mobs.

Hybrid: Usually a dps class you can rely upon to switch out and fill a gap -like heal when the healer is dead/stunned/overwhelmed or offtank when there are too many mobs. Nicely flexible as secondaries when there's a problem and can stop a mistake turning into a wipe: druids, paladins, shamans. fury warriors and shadowpriests to a degree.

Enhancement: classes that have some really amazing buffs for the whole party and make the party 3 times as good as it would have been, really nice to bring along not just for themselves but for what they do for everyone else. Shamans, Paladins. To a degree Shadow Priests. It's generally a good idea if you have a very mixed party anyway so you can have 101 buffs

Most of these really only come into play with instances and raids when you need balanced groups working together.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

heeee, dpser all the way then? You like your nuking classes! Classes that cause huuuuuuge nasty damage :). An agro whore in the making :)

You may also like Balance druid or Elemental shaman but they use a LOOOOT of mana so expect to spend a lot of gold on water. nice ranged attack power and tough as well!