I dinged 80 on my Shaman this morning, a bright new day for a completely different toon.

I arranged all my gear, set up my Glyphs and Vuh’do, got everything all set, and happily queued up for a random heroic. As a healer.

Lo and behold, I get for my first one, Utgardt Keep of course, thanks to the wonders of my not being all purpled out. :)

Went through, had fun, no problems at all. The recent articles in Totem Talk on WoW.com about Restoration Shamans have been very helpful in making sure I’ve got things straight.

After spending some time on other things today, I went ahead and logged back in for my second heroic as a healing Shaman.

This time, I get Oculus.

No problem, that’s not too bad. Sadly, my low gear score will mean squishy drake mounts, but everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Ah well… so much for my hopeful expectations. I found what can only be described as “situation normal, all selfished up”.

We went in, and the luck of the draw gave us a Bear tank with a really cute name, “Cutebearbutt”, and I thought, “Well, cool. With a name like that, it’s probably a pretty nice person playing. This ought to be neat to see someone else bear tank for a change.”

So much for having my judgment clouded by false expectations. You’d think I should know by now not to judge a player by the names they choose.

Although I stick by my practise of shunning any elven Hunter named a variation of Legolas. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, damnit.

Right off the bat, I get kept busy with spam heals, as the idiot mage blows stuff up with AoE outside the Bear’s range of Swipe, and takes massive damage from all the little whelps that, /shock, only pay attention to the one person doing threat to them. They sit there and shell him from a distance.

While I’m trying to nuke heal the Mage and keep him alive…. the Druid proceeds to keep on trucking, running all the way around and aggroing the entire ring. Of flying things. That she can’t keep aggro on. Many of whom she doesn’t even get a single tag on, since as soon as I start healing her, they’re all over MY ass from healer threat. And I can’t NOT heal her, because she’s taking massive damage and dropping like a stone. I gotta heal her and hope we get through this.

I keep her up, and me up, but with all the incoming damage on everyone, I can’t heal everyone else through it, and the Mage drops, then the Paladin, and then the Rogue and the rest of us follow. Honestly, I doubt my fully epicced-out Tree could have done any better.

I say, politely, that I’m a new healer, and I can’t handle healing through pulling quite that many mobs yet, and suggest that if that’s going to be a problem, I can step out so they can get someone else. I made sure I was very polite, and not snarky, because hey, I know how everyone is used to a high level of gear by now. If they want to run fast, I won’t get in the way, I’ll go look for a Nexus.

Tank quits the group without a word, followed by everyone else. Not a single word is said.

Not a “My bad for pulling a hundred whelps and leaving everyone else back there to fend for themselves and not bothering to actually establish aggro”, not a “oops, maybe I should have let the tank get aggro first” from the DPS, nothing.

Not a word. I entered the instance to retrieve my body alone.

Honestly, my first thought?

Screw you all very much, too. Screw you oh so very much.

My second thought WAS snarky; “Awwww, did’ums not have a healer to carry your asses through being stupid? Did’ums fear you might have to put forth some effort in playing properly?”

“Poor babies!”

Such are the moments of excitement and anticipation for newly dinged 80s in heroics.

I guess my meager 1500 spellpower unbuffed was a bad idea. Maybe I should go back and keep doing regular instances for a while. At least there, they don’t expect Icecrown raiders in all their pugs.

I think I’ll just put together a little drop list from regulars and see what happens.

Ah well… what did I expect, a welcome? Courtesy? Consideration for a new healer just getting started? Patience? ROFLMAO!

What am I smoking over here? Don’t I know it’s all about getting what each individual wants for themselves, and to hell with everyone else? 

Geez, what game did I think I was playing, anyway?

Every time my feedreader updates with Aspect of the Hare, I smile.

I know I’m about to have a smart, fun read!

I especially loved one of her recent posts, about not everyone below 80 being an alt.

It’s so true! I have the same tendency, after all this time, to assume unless corrected that almost everyone I meet has already played through the game once.

But it just can’t be that way, can it? People do leave this game and move on to other interests, how could it be otherwise?

Unless the secret WoW-zombie code that brainwashes us into playing isn’t just a rumor! /shiftyeyes

In other games I’ve played, like Dark Age of Camelot for example, the total number of people in the player base eventually raised to a peak, and then trended down. The message, to me, being that at that point in the game, there were more old players leaving than new players coming on board.

In WoW, as far as the data I have available to me goes, there has yet to be a drop off in total subscribers… but yes, there are still people leaving. I guess they are still being balanced by new players, or by multi-account owners.

Digression… let’s have fun for a second, shall we?

In World of Warcraft, the number of North American subscribers had been reported as 2.5 million around January of 2008.

By way of comparison, in 2009 the population of North America was estimated at 341 million people, and of those, 251 million were reported as internet users.

So, if we’re generous and pretend that the reported figures have some basis in fact and weren’t just pulled out of somebodies’ butt, (and if so, it wasn’t mine) then approximately 1 out of 100 people who use the internet in North America play WoW.

Yes, technically, it’s .99% but I hope you’ll forgive me if I round that up to 1%. It’s a heck of a lot more fun to say 1 out of 100 than 9.9 out of 1,000. 

And no, I’m not taking into account one person with 2 or more accounts just for themselves. I gots no data on what percentage of the WoW population are multi-boxers.

My point? Nothing, other than the amazement of following up my post of yesterday by thinking that out of 100 internet users, one of ‘em plays WoW. At the least, one out of a hundred has played WoW at some point. That’s kind of trippy.

Going back to the awesomeness that is Pike, I loved her post. It just brings back so many impressions I’ve had about the game over the years. Like how one of the biggest thrills in the game for me has always been seeing content that is new to me.

Pike mentions the awkwardness of being a new player when others assume you already know the fights, and then the surprise felt when being the experienced player and realising other people with you are themselves new to something. 

I did have one thought, when she shared some of her worry over the speed that new content can be cleared while leveling, and how with Emblem gear and upgrades, so much Wrath content felt dead and would be missed.

I think it’s very true that for new players, if the focus is on raiding, then a lot of old content will go unseen.

The thing I like to remember is, there are plenty of guilds and groups that enjoy the old content, and are alive to the fun of alts, and will be happy to all take their crazy alts into content that they’ve long farmed on their mains.

In Sidhe Devils, we have at times done retro raids in old content, Blackwing Lair, Battle for Mount Hyjal, Ahn’Qiraj 40, Molten Core, etc just to see it, and have fun.

Shoot, I think we went in and did a full Kara clear a week ago, just a spur of the moment thing. My Enhancement Shaman got the one handed axe from Prince, and swings it proudly. (She’s level 72, lol). I would like a second one to dual wield them, but why be greedy?

Doing retro raid content at level 70 or 80 isn’t obviously the same challenge as tackling it at peak difficulty, but it’s always been a lot of fun regardless. If someone leveling wishes to have had the chance to see that content, then they need only look for a guild that enjoys doing it. If they want a guild focused exclusively on raiding, then that’s their choice. But the potential is always there to get some friends and go do it.

Pike points out how hard it can be to get a Naxx 25 pug going these days, and that’s well made. There have been nights when I’ll put Windshadow in the lfg channel as a healer for one of the 25’s, and there just aren’t any forming. Plenty of Naxx 10 pugs still form, or Obsidian Sanctum, but I don’t do ten man raids in pugs in case someone in the guild decides to just spur one on out of nowhere. :)

But again… instead of doing it in a pug, there is always the chance you can find a guild like likes to do them.

Jess and Stop both mentioned that Sidhe Devils finally went ahead and did a little more Ulduar last weekend, we cleared the first four bosses, and then did Kologarn. None of us really expected any upgrades, but that wasn’t the point of going. Most of us had never seen all the fights before. I had certainly never seen Deconstructor, and the whole thing was a lot of fun.

Surprisingly, there were quite a few plate drops that ended up being upgrades for folks. When you think about itemization, not everything is represented by Emblems or drops in Heroic ToC. I know that Sesech was delighted to get that Spellpower shield from Kologarn, for example.

I’m not arguing with Pike at all, by the way. I agree with her post in all aspects. I’m just trying to mention a few things that are possibilities for new players, that will hopefully help her feel better about things. The chance to run content is out there. I swear! It may take some time, and it’s certainly harder than it used to be, but it’s there.

What I loved the most was all the discussion about playing with people in the game, and assuming they know everything about the game already. 

There is just so much to learn about the game that folks take for granted at times. Not everyone uses addons, for example. I bet there are still a ton of people who not only don’t use addons, but that don’t know about addons, and wouldn’t know how to install one either.

I still see folks that don’t have an addon that shows coordinates, and don’t know how to get one, asking how to find something in game.

That’s not a statement that people are stupid, either, damnit!

Everyone got the game somewhere, and when I got mine, nowhere did I find a slip of paper in the box that read, “This game is sort of okay as is, but in order to really play, you’ll need to install addons. Foshizzle.”

As I recall, I went all the way to level 60 playing solo without addons of any kind whatsoever, and it was only after joining Divine Might and preparing to raid that I looked on the guild forums, and found a section listing the addons I was required to install to raid with them.

I didn’t know how to install an addon. I had to search the internet for a guide on how to install them, and I think the website I found it on doesn’t even exist anymore. I was frightened to do it, too. You want me to put what in what folder? How do I know that it won’t mess something up? Installing WoW took a lot of discs!

Last night, for a brief time, Cassie and I were on alts traveling together to get some candy buckets.

We popped into Southshore, and then went afk while standing there on our mounts. We go afk on our alts a LOT, taking care of Alex or doing stuff. Just stand up and walk away from the computer. Sometimes our toons are still logged in, sometimes not.

This time, I walked back to the computer, and a level 47 or so Draenei was walking around, saying in /say “Why is everyone so silent?”

I scrolled up my chat log, and he’d whispered me, asking me “Where do I get a mount?”

You know, that’s just the kind of question that stops you cold. Is he serious, or is he trying to be a jackass? Best to err on the side of being nice. If he’s being a jackass, well, no harm done. If he’s serious, I don’t want to make him unhappy by being a tool.

So I whispered him back, just saying “Draenei can learn the riding skill, and buy a mount, in the Draenei city of the Exodar.”

He thanked me, and then asked, “How do I get back there from here?”

Well, how to answer? Shit, with all the boat route changes, do I even know? I just port to Moonglade.

“If you fly to Stormwind, go to the dock, you can take a boat to Darkshore, then run to the end of that dock and take a boat to the isle where Exodar is.”

“Oh wow, thanks!”

And off he goes.

Was that an alt? Or a new player?

I’d strongly think it was a brand new player.

My feelings to the question, the seeming obviousness of getting mounts and all the publicity of mount training changes and cost changes, etc, made me wonder about how new players get treated in general these days when having questions.

Is the attitude, the feel of the vocal gaming community in WoW friendlier, more offensive, or just about the same now as it was when I started?  

Really, when really trying to think back to how chat was when I started… I think that the general attitude, as offensive as it sometimes seems to be, is just about exactly the same as ever. If anything, it’s less offensive, at least on our server. Most of the true infantile asshats have moved on long ago. We’ve got bigots, racists, self-proclaimed world history experts, experts on religion, and general clowns, but I see more people day in and day out simply advertising their wares for sale, looking for groups, and asking what the daily is than anything else. There can be a lot of venom, but it goes in spurts. I think it’s better now.

There is more to feeling welcomed to the game than what people are saying in Trade chat.

Pike hits home when she talks about people leveling through the content very fast, and not seeing content. That’s just as big as how people talk to new players.

I think it’s even worse for new players, really, than it might seem from the outside.

Yes, new players level through content very fast… unless they are trying to do all the quests.

For experienced players, there are lots of quests that can be big time sinks, or are tough group quests, and you just know to avoid them, or to build up a lot of group quests, and then grab a friend and bang them all out at once before moving on.

For new players, people who really are trying to do all the quests in the zone (or in their log), especially without Questhelper, and are on their won without long time friends, there just aren’t people in the same zone to ask, “Where is Mankrik’s Wife?” like there used to be.

I do have one thought that reassures me. And that is the fact that almost every night, I see people in Trade chat advertising that they have a leveling guild, looking for new members.

I have to hope that folks that are new to the game and excited to play are able to find a guild to join, if they want one.

Hopefully, new players to the game are starting up, and having the World of Warcraft open up for them as a world of wonder and excitement, and the people they find within are nice, and helpful, or at least courteous and helpful if the new player is polite and helpful in turn.

If not, if the game seems cold, and distant, and populated with rude people too busy to take the time to offer a helping hand or a kind word, then I’d imagine the inevitable will happen.

Old time players will move on to new interests… and the new players coming in will become disenchanted with the game, and will move on to something else rather than waste their time feeling like an unwanted outsider that didn’t join when all the ‘cool people’ did. 

Once that happens, if it does… well, I don’t have to paint you a picture, do I?

I said it a long time ago, way back in the darkest days of the blog.

I said back then that I have certain expectations of other people during a run in the game. Any run, any content, any level.

The base expectation I have is, the people involved all attempt to play their class the best they know how, out of respect for everyone on the run.

All of the people involved.

A lot of time has passed since I used to talk about raid progression and Karazhan and even dallying within Gruul’s Lair.

Sometimes I’ve played in groups while chatting, and once notably while on a live podcast. But in my defense, when you’re normally raid leading and main tanking, sitting back and just doing ranged DPS does leave you with some extra capacity for chatting. Especially if the raid is a pug that’s not using ventrilo. I’m not saying you’ve got to be a single minded machine, I’m just saying that you need to be doing your best to play your class. If you can do that and chat too, hey, rock on.

My base expectation, that people who commit to group activities act with competence in playing their class, has not wavered.

I have other preferences, things that a player can do to move them, in my mind, from “meets expectations” to all sorts of categories far above.

To reach the pinnacle of excellence as a group player takes more than just being a really nice person. It also takes playing your class effectively, being prepared with mats/reagents/poisons/food, showing consideration for the others by actively trying to get TO the instance or raid as fast as possible, not going afk for extended periods without explanation, and not having a million disconnects in mid fight.

There are always exceptions. For example, sometimes disconnects happen without warning. It’s life, things happen. Nobody I know has ever held it agasint someone. On the other hand, if you know you’re getting disconnected every 5 to 10 minutes at random, and it’s been happening all day, it would be rude to ask a group to join you on a run without warning them about it first.

Sometimes you don’t have the food you need for a run. On a tough fight, with lots of wipes while learning content, you can run through food at a frightening rate. Likewise elixirs and flasks, and reagents for buffs. In my opinion, that kind of thing happens a lot, especially with dual spec. If you’re running tank for a few weeks, it’s easy to forget you ran out of healie food a while back until someone asks you to heal.

In my opinion, if you’re trying to start the group yourself, you should make sure you’re prepared. If someone asks you out of the blue to come help, well, if you didn’t have things on hand, it’s perfectly understandable. Circumstances change, there are no absolutes.

I’m pretty irritable about the “knowing where the hell to go” thing. Especially for Azeroth raids and instances. The game has been out for a very long time. If you seek out a Molten Core run, you ought to know where to go by now. If you are asked to come join, again, it’s more understandable. But if you want to start the runs, why haven’t you bothered to go check it out before now?

But the base requirement, the absolute foundation all else springs from, is trying your best to play your class well.

That includes having a spec that makes some form of sense… I don’t care what the reasoning is, I just ask that there be one, just to reassure me that you thought about what you wanted to do. I’m fine with a Beastmaster Hunter with a Pet Tanking spec in an instance run. Optimized for solo farming of BRD with your pet Turtle? Sounds fine with me, I bet that’s fun!

That also includes having gear choices made for comprehensible reasons. That same Hunter in all cloth spellpower gear? Girlfriend, who HAVE you been listening to? Trade chat? Yes, I’m sure your Mend Pet spell is very effective, but allow me to educate you as to the following mantra, “It’s all Hunter loot.” Umm, it ain’t.

I’m just using Hunters as a ‘for example’, I haven’t personally seen a spellpower cloth wearing Hunter that wasn’t just having fun messing with people.

But you get the idea. My Retribution Paladin, for example, loves Strength, Critical Strike, and Stamina. While soloing, I haven’t been turning aside Armor Penetration or Agility (for Crit Chance and Dodge), Hit Rating or Expertise either.

If I were to be prioritizing Intellect and Spellpower as Retribution, I’d expect someone to slap me. Hard.

When I get invited to groups, or if I put myself in a position where I may get invited to a group, I make it my business to know where I’m supposed to be going. Invited to a Molten Core run? Great, I know right where that is, and I know what I have to do to get attuned.

The alt I’m on might not BE attuned, but I know how to get down to BRD area and find out if I am, and know whether or not I’ll need to run into BRD and take the long way.

If I’m invited to The Nexus by a pug, and I’m in Grizzly Hills, I’ll get to a flight master and get started going that way, unless the group needs me to stop and pick up food or reagents somewhere. Sure, others may get there first, but then again, they may not. I shouldn’t expect a summons automatically, should I?

If I’m in a guild run, I’ll ask if I can get a summons if others are already closer, but that just makes sense. They’re already there, and they know me.

I try to bring food for myself. I appreciate and admire those that bring Fish Feasts to instances and raids (Hi Elystia!) but I still haven’t gotten my Fishing to that point yet. I figure, as long as I bring the food I’ll need, at least I’m not depending on the Fish Feasts of friends or strangers.

You get the idea. I expect good players, players I want to hang out with, to care enough to be prepared. To know what they’re doing. To pull their own weight at the minimum, and maybe have a little left over to pull the weight of someone else… but not have to.

People that get distracted by shinies and wander off in the middle of a run or even the middle of a fight, or are too busy chatting to actually, like, play, or get lost on the way to a raid or instance and need to be led by the hand to the portal, aren’t prepared, out of reagents, no food, not repaired, and disconnecting all the time…

/facepalm.

As I said at the beginning, my base expectation, that has not changed since day one, is simply that people play their class the best they know how.

What HAS changed, is my understanding of what that means.

Years ago, I expected people to want to do the best they could, but I knew in my heart that it was difficult to sometimes know what that was for a class. Heck, there’s a reason I started a Feral Druid blog. Years ago, they were poorly understood, especially as tanks.

These days, with the data on the official WoW Forums stickies, websites and discussion forums such as Elitist Jerks, and addons to help with gear choices such as RatingsBuster, it’s become easy for me to get accostumed to the idea that everybody knows how to play.

Maybe someone needs experience to put that knowledge into action. Maybe someone is undergeared for what they are trying to do. Maybe someone is even horsing around and not paying attention, goofing around, having a good time and not really caring.

But as the years have passed, somehow, somewhere, I got the idea that everyone learned how2play their class.

This blindness to reality led to what we had here last night. A baseball bat right between the eyes. 

A grand awakening.

Oh, holy shit.

Last night, I had a little time before bed, so I put my level 75 Retribution Paladin in LFG channel for some regular instances. I was tired, but the role of an axe-swinging, sammich-eating monkey, I felt that was something I could handle.

I was whispered within moments to see if I wanted to join a group to do regular Nexus, followed by Old Kingdom. I made sure to whisper back that I was Ret specced, was that okay?

“Sure”, I was told, “I’m Prot Specced, I’m the tank”. It was a level 72 Paladin.

Okay. I figure this should be a good test of where I’m at. I think I do good DPS, but since all I do is solo, how to judge? I hover at 1200 dps at level 75 as Ret in Grizzly Hills, but folks are hitting 2200 dps+ as new level 80s, so I might just suck.

And it’ll also give me an idea of how much I can go all out, or should throttle back, when playing with a lower level tank. Paladins are supposed to have very good threat generation, so this should be stimulating.

The group that formed was a 72 Protection Paladin, a 71 Hunter, a 79 Resto Druid and me, a level 75 Ret Pally. There was supposed to be a 79 Shadow Priest, but that player bailed out after the group formed.

We entered Nexus, and four-manned the place until thankfully a very skilled level 75 Shadow Priest was able to join us.

This run… this run shook up my preconceived ideas. My expectations have changed. Drastically. Dial up the wayback machine, because it’s 2006 all over again!

I tend to watch what people do around me. Yes, I do. I’m always looking to see how people play their characters in various situations in the hopes that I’ll learn something new and nifty.

Okay, a few things I noticed while doing this run, a run that had no wipes, and therefore must constitute a successful run.

Basically, the Hunter, Pally and Druid combined to form a blistering trifecta of pain.

First, I’ve never before seen a Resto Druid heal an entire instance without using Rejuvenation or Lifebloom. Healing Touch spam all the way. On the tank, and only the tank. Who never rose above 35% health on any fight.

Or a Paladin Tank that doesn’t have a taunt button, doesn’t understand what a kill target is, or how to apply AoE threat. A Paladin that can’t apply AoE threat! How f’ing hard is it to drop Consecration? Holy Shit!

And finally, a Hunter that sends the pet to attack the next group rather than the current group, including bosses, over. And over. And over. And over. The entire bloody be damned instance. Including early boss pulls before we’ve even finished the trash.

• “Dude, is your pet on Aggressive?”
• “Does Passive work the same as Aggressive now?”
• “No, put your pet on Defensive.”
• “It is.”
• “Then why is your pet attacking the next group?”
• “Is your pet on Defensive?”
• “Yes!”

I swear, that Hunter should have been in a guild called “Surprise Pull”. Except that after the 15th time, it’s no longer a surprise that the next group came running. Or that the boss was pulled as part of a trash pull.

So, you get a Druid that only heals the tank, and doesn’t do that well because instead of HoTs, he’s using Healing Touch exclusively. And the Paladin tank is so squishy that his health hovers around 35% most of the time, never much above that. So the Druid has to keep spamming to keep the tank alive with direct heals, and nobody else gets anything.

I keep running over that like a loose tooth. A Resto Druid that doesn’t use HoTs, and that dies several times and lets others die several times, without ever a Rejuvenation to be seen. Or a Lifebloom, for that matter. A level 79 Restoration specced Druid unable to heal regular Nexus. /shudder.

Anyway, so then you’ve got Mr Surprise Pull the Hunter, that not only pulls groups all the time, and sends the pet into other rooms, but actually is so desperate to out DPS everyone at 71 that he’s going all out on one target, pulls it, and then runs around trying to Ice Trap it before he dies (’cause he’s getting no heals, of course).

What makes me think that he was depserate to out DPS me?

Why, that would be the Damage Meter spam put out all throughout the instance.

After a while, I wanted to say, “Look, I’m at 1200, you’re at 950. It hasn’t changed yet, and it’s not looking like it ever will. You’re level 71 with 950 dps. Deal with it.”

And you’ve got the tank. Omigod, the tank.

I have been tanking a long, long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this guy.

He wasn’t marking anything. “Okay”, I think, “He must figure this is too kiddy skool to bother marking.”

But hey, I keep pulling aggro and then keeping the aggro somehow. He keeps changing his main target every second or two. I can’t tell what he’s targeting as a first kill that I can be safe on DPSing.

So I ask him, after a surprise boss pull, to please use a Skull to mark whoever he wants us to target for our first kill because I keep pulling aggro off him, over and over, and end up eating a mob.

“Sure”, he replies. “np.”

On the next pull, which the Hunter did not start early for a change, the tank put a Skull on one mob out of 3.

The tank pulled, I ran in, and I whacked the Skull. Once.

I got aggro.

Now, by this point I was actually expecting this. That is why I whacked it once, and only once, and then shut off auto-attack. And I stood there, with the tank sitting on top of all three mobs, and watched, doing nothing, as my health dropped, and I did not attack, and the Skull kept hitting me, and never, ever changed aggro to focus on the tank.

After a while of watching my health drop, I got ready. When I went below 10% I was poised to begin healing myself. Now I knew the deal with the Druid; main tank Healing Touch heal spam only. 

Only after the other two mobs were killed did the tank finally take the Skull off of me.

No Consecration, no taunting, and when he marked after that, he himself ignored the mark in favor of attacking other things. Apparently, he thought a Skull meant that was my target, and mine alone. He clearly knew how to do a mark, he put it up without any hesitation.

I began a program of procrastination. I’d target the tank, wait to see who he was attacking, hit only after he did, and watch him like a hawk to see when he switched targets so I could switch too.

When in a target rich environment, like the frequent times when the Hunter would pull the next group, and a few extra, I’d just Consecrate and Blade Flurry and basically go all out with everything that I had that did AoE to try to keep things off the healer and Priest, relying on Lay On Hands, Art of War/Flash of Light and bubble to keep me alive until I could eat food.

I pretty much left the Hunter to fend for himself. Watching him run around getting chased half the instance becamse one of my new favorite things.

At some point the tank started moving and hopping while tanking. He began hopping all over the place, moving and hustling around, twisting and turning. I frequently found myself targeting his current target in the middle of a fight, whacking it once, and then having aggro on that mob for the duration of the rest of the fight. I’d make sure to drag it to the tank, to hold it on the tank, and to not be hitting it as I patiently waited for him to pull it back off me. No dice.

I have to thank them, that run taught me that Pallies really are like cockroaches, damn near unkillable as long as you’re not silenced or stunned. 

Note: I now have a newfound respect and immense sympathy for every melee DPS that has ever had to attack targets when the tank won’t stay still for so long as a second. Holy shit people, if you’re tanking with some melee DPS, stand still unless you’re standing in a poison puddle, acid puddle, gas cloud, or other stationary damage dealing crap! How do you expect the melee to position behind a target, if the tank is dancing the Chubby Checker?

I watched in amazement once as the tank ran in. He dropped Consecrate on the way to the mobs, and then continued running, taking the mobs a good 15 yards past the Consecrate circle. That was the only time I saw him drop Consecrate, and I have to say, I wonder if he stopped using it because he thought it didn’t help. I was gratified to know that he at least had Consecrate somewhere on his button bar.

The capper, the absolute “Are you shitting me”, was when we took the dragon boss at the end.

The tank ran into the dragon chamber, closely followed by the healer. I started to follow, and then thought, “Maybe I should wait… and watch the Hunter. I’m thinking he’ll find a way to screw this up.”

Sure enough, the Hunter runs straight into the dragon chamber… and manages to pull one of the dragonkin patrols along the way. Without apparently noticing, and certainly without slowing down. 

I run in after, and of course the tank and healer are engaged with the dragonkin inside the dragon chamber, and have no idea, as usual, what anyone else in the group is doing. The Hunter feigns. The dragonkin goes for the healer.

I watch. “I’m not getting in the middle this time,” I say to myself. “It’s the last two trash mobs, let’s see them figure this out.”

The Healer begins to go down, as expected, because the tank won’t pull threat or taunt, or even notice. He’s off in some brave new world of discovery.

It’s only then that I realize that while I was back watching the Hunter run into the room trailing a dragonkin behind him, one of the folks already in the chamber, probably the tank, had activated  all the orbs, because we’ve got both the dragonkin AND the dragon boss active at the same time.

Glee!

I drop my aloofness since if the healer goes down we’re gonna wipe on the boss (and did I mention I really didn’t want to pay a repair bill for this crap?) and taunt off of him.

Why yes, Paladins have a ranged taunt. Shocker!

I focus on killing the dragonkin and healing myself, while hopping, and thank the lord for the Shadow Priest, who did awesome focused damage throughout the run… I think on my targets and not on the tanks’.

The dragonkin both go down, and I begin attacking the dragon boss. Yes, I know his name, but I like saying dragon boss. Each time I do, I’m thinking the Erfworld “dwagon”.

Anyway, what I mean is, I try to attack the dwagon boss. I mean dragon.

See, the tank, that glorious Paladin tank, is not hopping in one place and tanking the dragon.

He’s not even swiveling from side to side doing the electric slide.

No, the Paladin tank is running around at full speed, back to the dragon, sometimes spinning around to face it and keeps going that way, to and fro, hither and yon, with no rhyme nor reason. Sometimes he runs through the dragon to come out the other side and keeps going. Just complete chaos.

I have never, ever seen a tank run around like complete bugnuts crazy on the last boss in Nexus before. That was something to see, boy howdy.

I’d also never known that that dragon boss tail swipe was a knockback.

Why?

BECAUSE I’D NEVER SEEN ANYONE REPEATEDLY END UP AT THE DRAGON’S TAIL BECAUSE THE TANK KEEPS RUNNING AROUND BEFORE!!!

Now, maybe this style of tanking is something that other guilds do. I don’t know. I checked the WoW Armory for my character statistics, and across my characters I’ve only done Nexus on Heroic about 50 times. So I might have missed something, and this guy knew the neat special way to do the run.

Somehow, though, since after jumping down from the ice tunnel after the rock giant boss he took a right heading back into the mobs instead of a left toward the dragon, I don’t think so.

This, as I said, was a successful run. We never, quite, fully wiped.

But wait, it gets better!

Once the dragon was dead, the funniest thing ever happened!

The tank said, “Great run folks. Now on to Old Kingdom!”

Umm… no. OMIGOD no freaking way!

Wow.

I can feel my expectations recalibrating themselves… lowering… returning to 2006 levels.

Settling, settling… there!

Okay, now I am prepared for next time. No more pesky unrealistic expectations to get in the way!

Hello John, A Character Faction Change for the character “AnonymousPally” on the World of Warcraft account NOIMNOTSTHATSTUPID is now complete!

The character is now ready to enter a special faction change interface in the World of Warcraft character selection screen. Below is a summary of the transaction, which you may want to keep for your records.

——————————————————————————-

World of Warcraft Account Name: ISAIDIMNOTTHATSTUPID AnonymousPally – Level 73 Dwarf Paladin on Kael’thas to change factions from Horde to Alliance Date and time payment completed: 09/03/09 02:51 PM UTC

It has begun! Phear the Pally, who shall now betray the Alliance that spawned him in order to kill in Battlegrounds! Phear, I said!

And yes, if you look at that copy/pasted email from Blizzard, you’ll see that my Dwarf changed from Horde to Alliance. I guess I got my change in before they fixed all the typos. :) Either that, or I had a Dark Iron Dwarf and didn’t even know it.

Now, here’s the deal. Let’s talk about Faction Change decisions, shall we?

$30 is a lot of money to our family. I’m sure that for some folks it’s a chuckle or guffaw, and for others it’s a deal breaker. For me, I felt that it was a lot of money, enough that it’s a real big decision. Not something to take lightly at all. But still, doable for the right benefits.

My decision to change one character from Alliance to Horde was based on several factors.

First, direct benefits of a high level toon moved as opposed to simply having fun leveling one up as normal.

A low level character is a lot of fun to play, but I’ve been playing for over four years now. I have not only grown accustomed to having a strong support network from my higher level toons, but I’ve come to resent NOT having those high level benefits. The benefits of easy gold frmo daily quests, of easy greens and cloth and gathering mats from doing run throughs and mailing them to low level alts, and of course running my dear wife’s alts through things and vice versa.

I love playing alts. I just don’t like the “Okay, I dinged, now to grind for the next 15 minutes to get enough silver to train”, and let me tell you, paying 15 gold for a single useful green upgrade is flat out not a possibility.

I hate that enough that when we had people creating low level alts on our server to join the guild, people who had only had Horde characters before and couldn’t server transfer, I sent their new low level mains 4 high capacity bags and some gold to kick their career off. It seemed to surprise them, but good lord, how can you expect someone to level all over again with nothing? Oh ick, hells no.

So yes, I love leveling, but having a single high level toon at least is, at this point, simply helping me enjoy the game the way I’ve grown accustomed to doing.

Well, what about Death Knooblets?

Great question.

I DID make a Death Knooblet on Horde side to be able to help Cassie when she’d like it, and to farm in Outlands when my low level alts wanted stuff. That character is level 61, and to be honest, I think the character, a Tauren, looks AWESOME, but I dislike actually playing him. A LOT. I really, really don’t like the playstyle. Wierd, but there you go. I’ve got a mental block. And I can’t delete him, because he’s the coolest looking bastard I have on my Character List.

So, I would really like a character that is high level on Horde side to help Cassie, and also to be powerful enough to get things done and even earn Heirloom items for other toons, and get me gold and gear and yadda yadda yadda.

Second, what kind of high level to bring over?

I didn’t want to put any character over to the dark side that I had a rich, full history playing with my friends.

Windshadow my Druid, Windstar my Hunter, even Windburn my Shadow Priest, each has a very rich history playing with my friends in the guild in large group activities. Granted, my Shadow Priest hasn’t done so since Karazhan… but that doesn’t matter, Windburn raided and played with my friends a lot. There are shared experiences there. The characters have a persistent ‘life’ in my mind associated with the Alliance and Sidhe Devils.

So, a high level (70+) character that also doesn’t have a lot of shared history with friends. Someone that mostly has only ever soloed.

Third, the someone must be a badass on his own. Someone that can solo stuff well, hold multiple mobs, generally kick some butt. Maybe be able to heal or tank as well, but really, I don’t want to send my Shaman off at level 72 to try and take a level 60 through Ramparts. Someone that can shephard others through instances, even high level Outlands ones.

Finally… the character has to be self-sufficient in terms of money and materials. Someone that doesn’t need a network of crafters to keep them in the money.

This is serious, since I’ve been known to have a high level Skinner/Jewelcrafter before. Yeah, that works cheaply when you ain’t got a Leatherworker to give skins, or a Miner to provide ore.

I personally chose my level 73 Dwarf Paladin as a character that perfectly fit all the characteristics of what I wanted.

The character is a Paladin, and if I can’t bring my Druid over, that’s really the next best thing to me. All my love to Hunters, I love my own desperately, but my Paladin is already Dual Specced, and has Healing and Ret sets. Putting together a tank spec and gear won’t be that difficult, and learning to tank as a Paladin actually sounds pretty damn fun. :)

The character class can certainly fulfill the ‘helps out whatever needed’ role admirably.

My Paladin has balanced Professions already. 415+ Mining and 442 Engineering, with both Ret and Healing goggles made and on hand. That’s not too tacky, eh? Already got the best stuff I wanted done.

And finally… not only has my Paladin already gotten the Dual Spec training, but also has Flying and the Cold Weather Flying Heirloom training to tool around Northrend on a 150% speed Gryphon. He’s already got all the tools he needs to be fully self-sufficient. He doesn’t need my ‘mains’ sending him cash anytime in the future.

It’s funny… I’m really looking forward to seeing how the rest of the process goes when I log in. I’ve even got my Heirloom PvP Gun already in inventory, ready to hand to my Troll Hunter.

Now to see what it looks like when I go from short and stumpy to tall, thin, and desperately needing a sammich!

Yeah, I know, I almost never do this on the blog. This was a damn good question, so what the heck. I’ll push back the other four posts I was in the middle of writing to answer it.

Hey there, I’ve been reading your blog for a while, and I have started
down the druid road.  I’ve got 3 toons at 80 already (all of which
happen to be hordies on Kael’thas), but at the prodding of my
guildmates, I made a druid.  Well, it wasn’t so much prodding as me
saying “Druid or Rogue” and the general consensus come back “druid.”
I haven’t played one since the closed beta, but I’ve already enjoyed
it a lot more than I did then.

So, to my inquiry… I can’t find much on the “leveling” aspect of the
class that’s been updated since TBC.  Do you have any generalized
advice or suggestions?  I’m drawn to feral, which is supposed to be
the hotness in terms of leveling and versatility, but I’m kind of at a
loss for which direction to take my talents.  Is it better to lean
bear in terms of leveling and survivability, or is it better to shoot
for raw damage and roll cat-esque talents?

Thanks!

Chris

First, thanks for the letter, Chris. And damn good questions.

Let me first get this out of the way; if what you want is the absolute smoothest or fastest possible leveling experience, I would go with Balance.

The reason is attitude more than anything else. When you start at level 1, you start as a caster, and are stuck in it until level 10. That get’s you accustomed to the gear and playstyle. You have crowd control, ranged attacks, all sorts of fun stuff.

When you get Bear at 10, unless you’re rich from higher level toons you typically don’t totally redo gear choices, and having half caster/half bear gear or spec just sucks from 10 to 20. Plus, Bear is very underpowered in terms of DPS from 10 to 20 compared to caster style. If you DO max out the agi/str/stam/armor value gear and go with Feral Talents, then you’ll do great as a partner of another DPS player as a bear, but you really won’t enjoy the soloing from 10 to 20.

Now, once you are level 20, and you’ve got Cat form, it’s a hard decision. Again, to go Cat, you have to completely regear from your caster stuff with all new gear with Strength/Agility/Attack Power/Crit/Stam as your stat choices.

As a refresher, in Cat and Bear, 1 point of Strength equals 2 Attack Power, and in Cat form ONLY, 1 point of Agility equals 1 point of Attack Power.

I’m going to assume from your letter that you want to go Feral as you said, and my blessings upon you. I chose Feral because I love it… I’m not about what feels easiest, personally. Also, there is a lot more leather Cat gear than there is leather caster gear in early levels, thanks to our friends the Rogues.

Cat DPS is similar to a Rogue, you’ve got Stealth, you’ve got Finishing Moves and points, you use Energy as you use abilities, etc.

The biggest tradeoff is that you lose stunlock capability and massive evil in toying with your pray for the ability to shift out of Cat form to cast instant heal over time spells on yourself, and then shift into Bear to wear multiple opponents down.

I’m writing a series of articles about low level Bear tanking right now, and I wasn’t planning on talking about Cat DPS, because there are several great Cat DPS blogs.

But in general terms, as a player focused on Cat, you’ve got very good DPS. You’re DPS won’t be as big a burst out of the gate as a Rogue, but it will be very good compared to other melee. On single targets you’ll be extremely powerful, and I would level using Talents to maximize that Cat power.

Even so, the Feral Tree combines enough other things that your Bear form won’t just be an afterthought. 

And because of that, by maximizing Cat and keeping balanced Feral Gear, you’ll find that it’s multiple pulls where you’ll really tear things up if you take the time to have fun.

I’ll give you one example.

Say you’ve got three mobs in front of you. By level 30, you’ve got Bear Swipe and Maul, and in Cat form you’ve got Claw and Rip. You’ve also got both Rejuvenation and Regrowth, and of course Entangling Roots.

Assume there is one caster in the group.

You can start in caster form at max range, cast Regrowth on yourself (while out of combat), cast an Entangling Roots at a melee fighting target far from the ranged mob (so you won’t be in melee range while dealing with the caster) and then pop into Bear and activate Enrage, run up to the ranged mob (Demoralyzing Roar) and begin going to town on both targets, using Glyphed Maul primarily on the caster, and Swipe of course, burning him down. 

The caster will die, and the Entangled target will probably be free and on you at this point. If you’re health is getting low, then you can cast Rejuvenation right from your button bar to automatically pop you into caster form, and then decide whether to pop back into Bear and keep going, or into Cat for faster DPS if you think you can take two at once.

Once the second one is dead, flip into Bear if you ain’t already there, Bash the last one to stun it, pop into caster and cast another Regrowth and Rejuve, and then leisurely finish him up.

I say this is a three mob pull, but honestly, I’ve done this for over 15 in a row, in a stream. Using Cat when low numbers of mobs are on you, Bear when you’ve got several, and Bash and Rejuvenation and Regrowth to keep health coming in as you go makes things very fun.

Sound difficult?

If so, then you might not really be cut out for Feral. You’ve got all these tools to use, and you can really use them to screw with the enemy by remembering your strengths;

• Each form has a purpose.
• Caster Form has solid DPS ranged spells, but instant cast heals over time that keep ticking regardless of what form you’re in are awesome.
• Bear form is very durable, has attacks to hurt multiple mobs, especially if you’re geared appropriately and have a Rejuve and Regrowth ticking away on you. Plus, you get Maul Glyphed giving you big whacks on two targets, and a single target Bash stun for you to shift out and cast more heals.
• Cat form is kinda squishy, but does great single target DPS, and if your health starts dropping, you’ve always got the Rejuve/Bear combo to fall back on.
• Most of all, fast DPS in Cat at the cost of being squishy, or slow DPS in Bear with the benefit of greater mitigation and higher health from the same gear, gives you the power to use your judgment on the fly to decide what’s best in your current circumstances.

As far as a leveling Talent spec, what I’ll do is invite some of my blog readers that run their own awesome Feral Cat blogs to help you out. I’m really focused on that wierd subsect of people like me, that like to level as a focused Bear tank and play grouped the whole way. I’m not testing leveling a Cat druid at the moment, and what the heck… I’d love to see some attention go to the Cat Druid bloggers that rock.

I hope that some of what I’ve said helps, Chris, and I look forward to hearing more of your experiences as you level!