Blame Game

http://holyshockbyruhtra.blogspot.com/2010/05/tanks-tanks-tanks.html

There is just so much wrong with this that it isnt even funny.

Who is playing the blame game?

The fact is, Tanks Learn Through Group Play How To Tank Effectively, a tank can read all the strats in the world but is likely to fall on his face at LEAST once during a group run. A dps can learn how to play in a group very effectively in a bg. And a smart dps of a tanking class will actually read what their spells are doing and NOT USE A THREAT GENERATING ABILITY IF THEY AREN'T TANKING. There are things we can all point out in each others performance that are not suitable for group play in most circumstances, and this even includes the tank and healing roles.

Don't Fear Mobs
Don't Use High Threat Abilities
Don't Taunt Unless Asked
Don't Berate Fellow Group Members

This all really comes down to two things... Read up on your class and be open to suggestions from other players. You don't have to take those suggestions but remember if people are complaining about  it then it is likely a deterrent to the group. The only thing the lfd has done is put those people with short fuses in the drivers seat, and I aint talking about the tank. Tanks are getting hurried and put out of the position where they can just sit back and look at a situation as a new tank. It isn't the heals or the dungeons that keep me from tanking on any of my characters, it is the short tempered, cant read skills, gottagogottagogottago, pulls for you dps. So, yes, it is the fault of the dps that there is a shortage.

And yes, I am looking at it from the dps and healer perspective. If I go tank, it will be for friends only.

As for the whole turn the mob around, if it is a dragon, turn it, if not, I am usually on my way around already and if you are there tanking I get confused.

For the complainers in my groups, the tend to be dps characters, rarely a healer or tank complains about the preformance of another member.


Just face it now... People are rude and the ruder you are in dungeons to group members the less likely they will be to continue in what ever capacity they are trying to fill. If you are rude to a tank or a healer then have to suffer through long wait times... You might just be on everyones ignore list.

Heals classes, overview

Yeah, if you stumbled across this site somehow (which would be pretty hard considering I barely even advertise it anywhere) you may like to know a little bit about my thoughts (obviously).

So, an overview of the different healing classes at level 80

Druid: my first level 80 healer, level feral to 78 grinding on mobs and then switched to balance for picking up spell gear. After a bit of farming, switched to resto/feral. Druid heals is what i have done in raiding most and we excel at steady damage raid wide. I actually would recommend a druid healer above almost all other specs for any kind of group play.

Priest: My second level 80 healer and leveled as holy to 70 and then went disc. Did a bit of a stint early 80 career as a shadow priest to gain the spell gear via dungeons (you know, without dying or killing everyone else, yeah, a little sly of me but still.) Pre 70 holy absolutely rocks for group damage as well. Disc is really nice as well. I recommend either spec for a beginner healer as my first choice, especially for someone who is new to the game of healing. Remember that Disc focuses on preventing damage and holy focuses on healing through it.

Shaman: My third level 80 healer (giggles) and I have yet to heal a heroic with her. I found a love of enhancement play and have been playing in dungeons as enhancement most of the time. As for ease of healing, of the classes, third choice. Mail gear is hard to come by pre 80 and itemization is just wonky.

Paladin: My fourth heals at 80, and my most recent addition to the team of heroic healers, I put aside my heals set to focus on my dps set after hitting 70. I always had a cobbled together heals set but nothing up to the level of my dps set, now though, they are getting closer to average ilevel and I am confident that I can keep up most groups lacking any kamikaze stratagies. The Paladin is probably the class that is hardest to get used to for me. The lack of group heals really hurts in todays group wide damage days. I still do not look foward to doing anything above the original wrath heroics (no toc, icecrown) because of the lack of mana regen. Yes, i need to stack mucho more intellect.

Healing spells across classes

EDIT 2011 April, 30: This is likley outdated now with the changes to healing in 4.X so totally disregard this post :) .


 I decided to go through my spells on all my character (by copy/pasting the spells from the wiki) and singling out the spells that may be of benefit for a heals to use so that I can more easily sort out how my clique bindings will work for each of my classes of heals (yes, I play them all, I collected them all too until HeartGold/SoulSilver but that is another thing)

Some notes: Multi heals are more fluid, affecting who ever they feel like. Party heals are for only you and up to four others in your numbered party, and group or raid heals are for anyone. I decided to not split the paladin hands and put them all up there. I did not remove spells that are trumped by other spells (the non-hot cures, that bastard priest heal, Paladin purify) or add spells that are the result of glyphing.

I noticed a bit of a problem with the increase effectiveness portion as I went through the more support oriented paladin and disc priest specs where the spells cover more than just +something but still do not actually heal a target.

My initial goal with this was to cut apart the spells and place them on a model 5 button mouse for placement, our printer is broken so this is the closest I can get now. I still will probably end up doing the above just for the thrill of possible paper cuts :D . 

The Best & Worst: Cities/Towns: Blog Azeroth Shared topic

After a long day of adventuring, where's your favorite town to hang up your weapon, take off your boots or slippers and curl up with a glass of wine? (Or a skin of whatever swill you undead people drink.. how does that work anyway? I wouldn't think you'd need food and water, but I see you nomming as much as the rest of us.)

What town makes you want to turn your charger around and race for the next outpost? Where you know the bedbugs WILL bite, and the slop on your plate will likely leave you with indigestion?

Be as flexible as you like! Capital cities, towns or outposts--even that little wayside moonwell in on the edge of Ferelas is fair game!

Well, Dal is where my hearth is set for all my characters who are currently equal to or greater than level 74. I usually dont take the time to have someone port me to Dal before that.

As for where I WOULD like to set my hearth if the place had the convenience of the city portals of Dal, it would have to be somewhere pretty, and likely wooded. Ashenvale perhaps? Oh, Astraanar for Alliance characters and Camp  Mojache for horde characters. I love the look of Feralas but I dislike that the Alliance don't have nearly as pretty of an establishment there.

As for towns I dislike... I would have to say the entire zones of Descolace and Shadowmoon Valley. Descolace has bad memories for me and Shadowmoon was just way too fel firey.

I just realized I totally forgot about Nagrand. I love the zone a lot but I still think I would prefer the slightly darker but much more wooded Feralas and Ashenvale.

Canceled Raid - Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

Basically what I would do if my scheduled raid was canceled.

Usually, go to a different aspect of the game, be it leveling an alt, pvping, gathering mats, fishing, chatting with the guild, running dungons. At the time I was last in a guild with scheduled raids, I had plenty of time to do just those things, the raid gorup wasnt looking so hot on memebership and lots of times it just didnt go. This was much more annoying when I was working third shift and planning on raiding once I got up. I would get up about 15-30 minutes early just to be on time to the raid and see it had been canceled because few others wanted to raid.

Being on third shift wasnt really all that bad, but most of the time, I had a hard time getting to sleep, so getting up early was a really big deal.

Fun Food time

There are only a few foods that both me and my boyfriend find acceptable for weekly consumption...

Mt dew and chicken nuggets cut into the shape of dinosaurs. I know, we are a weird bunch. Every so often, I will growl at him and he will growl back. :D

Fun shape Chicken nuggets: Perdue Chicken

Leveling 1 to 10: Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

A while ago Blizzard came out with the stat that 70% of its accounts don't ever make it past level 10. While I am sure that Blizzard can put in some great analysis of their game, I am also sure that they would love to hear more player feedback on the new level experience.

Now I realize that most of us are far from newbies and we won't be able to get into a newbies mind set perfectly (heck I am 10 years out of newbiehood for MMOs and 5 years out for WoW), but I think we can all add to the dialog about those first 10 levels, what works for you and what doesn't.

Obvious examples of "broken" 1-10 experiences are hunters--a petless pet class and paladins--who, if they are lucky, get to hit a second button in combat 1-10. I have a some what closer examination of the dwarf paladin experience on my blog, but it needs working and technical corrections at least. It would also be recast as a Blog Azeroth topic rather than a SAN project.

I have read some of the ones that have already been posted and I have to agree with most of them. Feral druids have it rough but their roughness doesnt really come into play until they start speccing into feral and this is about the pre-talented years. Hunter pre-hunter-pet is one of THE most annoying experiences ever. I thought it was kind of neat that you had to go through the quest to get the pet but the lack of pet in the low levels makes it really hard to level at all. Throw that into a newbies hands and you have a recipe for disaster that will make its way into your group setting. Most new characters have no idea about how to even play the game much less kite around a mob just out of melee range. Granted, once you get your pet, a mediocre amount of intelligence is all that is needed to even play one to the point of making it to 80*.

And lots of the melee classes are in similar boats in the really early levels. Up until the recent changes to the low levels, rogues had a single dagger but that has been doubled with the changes and made them a much easier class to play in low levels. The paladin, only one damaging attack, no buffs or anything, makes them pretty boring early on. I woudl comment on the warrior and any other class i havent commented on already but most of those pre-level 10 comments would be really badly outdated.

*As long as you are working on quests that give you xp you will make it to level cap. I really find it annoyig when people think leveling is hard. They are confusing hard with time consuming and should probably quit this instant cause WoW just becomes even more time consuming.

Mains

I have been going back and forth with the thoughts of posting my characters here. There really is no reason for me to not post my characters here and there is only one group of people that may see themselves in what I speak of. I thought I made it clear to them that I never wanted to leave the guild in the first place, but the fact that I did goes against that. As a thought I have decided that I will eventually disclose if not all, most of my characters names/realms.

The Perspective of Shifting

Or Why Moonkin, Cat and Bear Should Be Considered for Cooldown Status.

I am pro-forms but only because, if something is going wrong, the likely-hood of me being able to trigger a global cooldown ability is going to be slim to nil. The more I will need such an ability the more likely I won't have a global cooldown to throw its way.

What the Tree provides:

• Great landmark for pugged/raid environments
• Armor buff
• Marginal increase in healing
• Shifting
  

The only thing that cannot be replicated into another ability is the first and the last one. We will throw out the last one on the grounds that shifting shouldn't be required to do ANY of our spells.

No comments = better bloggers?: Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

One of the things that can make us happiest as bloggers is seeing e-mails notifying us of comments on our blogs. However, if we took that away - and the influence it may have over our writing - would we become better bloggers?

Would writing what it really is you want to write make you truer to the purpose that you started the blog for? To write exactly whatever is in your head, rather than worrying about whether or not anyone will find it "interesting" or "good enough" to comment on? For the joy of writing?

Or are comments integral to your blogging experience and if you don't have them, you don't write?

I am still writing this blog without actually publishing it anywhere. It isnt that I wish to keep my thoughts seperated from others, just that I dont think my thoughts are worth pushing onto others that may not want them. My blog will end up being more than just WoW. I just dont have anythign else to actually comment about at the moment. I dont like setitng standards that may end up changing drasticly later. So this blog is about what I do and is only here because I wish to write about some things but isnt here specifically for feedback. I had a website for nearly 5 years and never had the need to actually promote it more than just linking in a signature.

World of Awecraft...?: Blog Azeroth Shared Topic Recap

A suggestion from me here...

In a random conversation with a good friend of mine, whilst he bubbled his way off Thunderbluff after collecting the elders achievement, was how we first felt that very first time we encountered the ?? of a high level of the opposite faction.

It became very much like, "i remember my first time that..." and one of the things I remember was how in awe I was off this big tauren who came and stomped his/her way through Astranaar, killed all the NPCs and in my tiny, level 20 druid mind I thought - I CAN HELP!!! I cast a rejuv on a guard, and he /laugh ed at me, and one shotted me.

I was bewildered, confused and totally in awe.

There were many times during my first year on WoW I was awed by something or other - even when I walked into Naxx as a level 80 for the first time, I felt awed.

I'd be curious to see if we can get bloggers writing about what gave them that sense of wonderment when they started playing WoW, started PvPing, started raiding...whatever it was that made you gasp!

Elsen

This is the first shared topic I have come across that was in the past when I did it, most of the ones I come across I can write and set to publish later. Instead of setting this post-time-I-wrote-it I decided to just put the little recap in the topic to show that it is an older topic that I am visiting.

I was in awe of everythign when i first started, the different playstyle from what i had previously played (diablo 2), the different character models and the different areas/environments.

I thought it was awesome that some of the old azeroth areas had actual weather and the whole place seemed to change because of it.

I loved the different professions I could do and the fact that I could fish when I was waiting for my bf to get home. Just about every aspect of the game has an awesome quality to it. It is truely a great game.

Guild woes

At the end of the year I was in a guild that had just started a second 10 man group. I was also working almost full time third shift as well which meant I had to actually drag my butt out of bed to get to the raid on time (read: 15 minutes before hand to make sure everythign was set addon/flask/food wise). Just call me one of those raiders who thinks of the other 9/24 people in the group and expects them to do the same.
So I was setting my alarm clock for my days off so I could paticpate in these raids. Let me tell you, when a raid interferes with your sleeping schedule you get uptight about others not taking the start time/sign up seriously. I became disenchanted with my raid group and the guild in general, no it wasnt the fault of any one person but the lack of any real consequence of not showing up was grating to say the least.
Around February the gm of the guild said some off hand but rather offending remark. She usually wouldn't do such a thing and as I now look back, I can see her anger over the raid group, at the time still faltering a bit, and the whole "pre cataclysm post most good stuff in expansion" time of the expansion. This time gets everyone into a huff. Well, I left the guild because the GM wasn't really responding the way I have come to know from her. Really wasn't anything important but I wasn't really in the mood to think about it at the time so I just pulled all my characters from the guild, pretty much without thinking of the long term consequences. So, my characters, just about every one, are guildless, and I only have myself to blame.
The bad part? I still love my old guild so much I don't want to even try another.

Reasons why I declined the group role check...

I always have wondered why a person would sign up for a dungeon through the looking for dungeon feature and then not actually accept come time to enter. Some of these are easy to identify, that person who waits until the timer has expired, yeah, they are afk. I have had mine pop when I was up going to the bathroom before so I can see how someone may have stepped away for half a minute to miss the role check.

Healium addon WoW

O_O wow. Just wow. I was looking at this addon cause a heals in a 5 man dungeon I was running was having terrible trouble healing when the tank wasnt the dungeon lead.

Raising Awareness - Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

Raising Awareness about wow account security

The only brush with a "hacker" I have ever had was one time I couldnt get into my account around the time wrath was released. My boyfriend had added wrath to my account without telling me and I went nuts that my password wasnt working so I went to account management and changed my password (cause he had changed mine to get into it) During this time he arrived at home and after him watching me in a "not quite annoyed enough" way he admitted that he changed the password and that i should look at my account page. I was both estatic and hectic at that point, but i needed to change my password anyways so, it was all good.

Starting over - Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

Inspiration from:  Starting over - Blog Azeroth By Pieces

If you had the chance to start all over again in WoW, but your char is already level 80, or level 1 depending on if you like to level or not :>. What class would you pick? What race? What faction?

I am an altaholic, so I have many characters in the process of leveling to 80. I enjoy the whole leveling experience. As for faction (the easiest of the questions) I would go Horde, totally love the characters as they are more than just the human, lanky human who is purple, human who is short,  human who is uber short and O_o wtfweneededanonhuman!  You have cows, you have lanky humans, you have uber pretty humans, and you have stout green humans horde side, I mean, much awesome-er than the human and humanlike races of the alliance! Race would likely be Tauren, they just have my love, likely a female since I cannot stand the male butt scratch. As for class, I have a hunter, shaman and druid Tauren, I have no real intrest in the death knight class at the moment (though I will get one to 80 eventually) so I would have to go Warrior (despite the fact I have an 80 horde warrior already, I just love the Tauren that much). And I would start at level one, if I could, with the shoulders and chestpiece for exp bonus. Yeah, already leveled 7 Horde characters, I dont need the immersion of shuffling through all those quests again.

Blog Azeroth

Since I dont have any real stories to share and I have this blog, I need to write something in it. I know, lots of time since my last post but I have the right to ignore my own blog, plus, this place is mainly for my thoughts and less because I WANT you to read it. I will let you read it though, cause I am just nice like that.

So I have decided to look for different topics to talk about, those memes and such. They look fun to get into and I do enjoy the idea of writing about some of them. Since most of my current web browsing is related to World of Warcraft, it wasn't much of a stretch for find topics specific to WoW. I will eventually track down other places for endless thoughts on writing. So, the nice ladies and gents at Blog Azeroth will be my current inspiration (to deal with the fact that my comp is falling behind the requirements of WoW very quickly and it is just about impossible to play at some times during the day.)

Yeah, I am nuts, I actually enjoyed those "write your thoughts on this" essays in school.

If you see a place where my grammer is nuts, I blame hillbillies.

My characters

An intro to my characters of course.

Intro

O_o blog. duh.