Thursday, December 23, 2010

The New Heroic


I guess you could call me hardcore. Cataclysm came out December 7th and I was 85 on December 8th. Before the first week was up I had already gotten some epics through reputations, gotten a ton of gear from heroics, and leveled up both my professions to 525. I ask myself though how hardcore do I want to be. I know my ability. I make a good tank because I can multi task. I make a good leader, explain things well, have good control in fights, can maintain threat, positioning, and adjust quickly as the fight changes. I do think about the game a lot when I am not playing , but right now I'm not thinking all good thoughts.

World of Warcraft is a social game. It can be amazing when you get together with other people and things turn out real well but at the same time the opposite is true. Lately, playing with certain people has lead to more frustrations then enjoyment. The LFD tool is great. It lets people get together and tackle heroics but it was introduced at a time when running dungeons was a joke. The entire group can be held together with 1 or 2 competent people and everyone else was along for the ride. Now that gear has reset and we are not as powerful as we once were, we have to rely on the entire group to be able to defeat encounters.

This is where my frustrations are. I have been increasing my friends list with people that I know are competent. I try to run with them whenever possible. We will all get together on vent and we mark targets, crowd control, and use our abilities to make the encounters easier. The thing is I don't always have people online when I want to run a heroic and that is where I have to rely on the pick up group. I would have to say the likelihood of getting into a group that has the capability of getting to and defeating the last boss is about 30%.

The first pull will tell you a lot about how the group is going to function. To many times I will get a group that has no CC. A warrior, death knight, and a druid will be my dps and I am limited to root which wont do much when I have caster mobs. Then you have the people who refuse to interrupt. They probably don't even have it on their bars. People will listen though. They will dps skull first usually, will crowd control when asked, try to use some of their non-dps abilities. The problem is they don't really react fast enough. If a cc breaks they won't even notice. A spell starts getting cast and they wont interrupt. They don't notice when whirlwind is happening or there is fire on the ground. People are stuck in tunnel mode once the fight starts unless they are looking for something. We were doing the third boss of Grim Batol last night and a boomkin druid and holy priest just refused to get behind the boss when he did his 180 degree arcane breath.

Communication is key when doing heroics and when I explain to the group what to expect it increases our chances but doesn't mean success. I have been lucky with drops and have gotten to the point where there are no tanking upgrades left in heroics. The only thing left for me is to get my 70 valor points a day. I click on the LFD tool but don't always que up knowing that I might waste over an hour of time and not come out successful.

Then their is raiding. For as hard as heroics are, raiding is on a different scale altogether. Outside of Baradin hold, the other raids are extremely punishing. There are just to many abilities that the boss does that punish you if you ever mess up. I know I am more then ready for the raids but the people I run with are not decked out as well as I am. I can't really blame them because we have only been in Cataclysm for less then 3 weeks. My server, Thunderhorn, just doesn't have a good hardcore raiding community. The one guild that was in front as far of progression split up due to drama. We have been pugging a couple of spots for our raids and while the people we recruit are good, we haven't been able to make headway into raiding.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Cataclysm Week 1


Three Weeks ago the Shattering happened changing the world as we knew it forever. I created a couple of new alts and got my hunter up to 52 and got to experience the Blizzard magic through all the new leveling zones. This week was the true test though. December 7Th the new expansion launched at 3am.

Just like the last 2 expansion me and my best friend took a couple of days off and were ready and waiting for the clock to tick down to the point where we could get experience again. The difference between this expansion is the digital download and the fact that you could buy the game at midnight but it didn't start until 3 am. So it felt like the entire server was there waiting for the switch to be fliped. We were there along with them at the gryphon trainer to get our Master Flight Licence and to grab our bread crumb quest to enter Mt Hyjal. We did have some hiccups getting what we needed but we were able to get going and start our grind to 85.

Last expansion took about 4-5 days to get to level cap so I figured this should take about the same time. Competition was fierce this time around though. Everywhere you turned there were tons of people trying to grab whatever quest mobs they could causing frustration all around. Story has taken the stage for the questing experience and I wanted to make sure I read everything and understood what was happening in the zone. Also with phasing and all the new cut scenes it does make you go a bit slower then the people who ignore everything else and jump straight to finishing the quest and getting experience. During Wrath Expansion were about the 20Th to 25Th people to hit 80. For this go around it took less time with less then 2 days to get to 85 but we were closer to being between the 50Th to 60Th person to get to 85.

Unfortunately my best friend and I both wanted to play Plate tanking classes. Him on his Death knight and me on Bladez the paladin. We do have synergy but that also means we are competing with each other for any drops out of dungeons. Speaking of dungeons I must applaud Blizzard on making the 5 mans a lot more engaging. Mechanics that were usually reserved to raiding has been found on every boss in Cataclysm. You may not notice it to much in the normal dungeons but the heroics require coordination and understanding of the encounter to pull off. There are a lot of punishing bosses in Cataclysm and I have sat at certain bosses for 15 attempts before the group can take them down. Some of my favorite include the 3rd boss in StoneCore where as a tank you have to constantly side step a Ground Stomp and run away from a shatter. If you fail to do either one it is a group wipe. The third boss in Blackrock Caverns is also very punishing. He has an armor buff that can only be removed by standing him in fire. Debuffing him only lasts 10 seconds but every time he gains his armor back 3 adds spawn. Killing the adds results in an explosion of fire that will allow hurt you but remove his armor. The longer he stay in the fire the bigger his stacks get which does fire damage to the entire group. You have to kill the adds at the same time otherwise when they die it will create another pool of fire that will give the boss more stacks. Both of these bosses have challenged me and my group to play at our absolute best to defeat.

Then we have the raids. So far I have done the Barradin Hold raid which isn't to difficult but the first boss in both Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight are nothing like Wrath Intro Bosses. They are defiantly Gear Checks as well as ability to execute checks. The bosses have 8 or more different mechanics that have to be dealt with during the encounter and needless to say it whooped our butts.

I don't mind though. I enjoy learning a new fight and trying different strategies before settling on one that will eventually succeed. In terms of succeeding gear is defiantly a big factor. Since I am a tank the Que is pretty short. I also enjoy the leading role so I will mark all CC targets and explain every encounter to any one I run with to maximize my chance for success. As a result I have decked out my character in almost all heroic level dungeon gear. There are a few pieces here and there that I want to pick up as well as reputations to level up to get me some epics. Though for only 1 week into the expansion I am in a good spot. Now its just time to wait for the rest of the people to catch up and to start downing some new bosses.