Of course, I just pulled it from Jules in Pulp Fiction, but we can pretend that I had some loftier source in mind, right?

Oh, and not that there is anything wrong with goth chicks. Nope. All in favor, myself. Anything that breaks people out of the normal everyday is all right in my book.

Mah point, I say mah point, son, is to talk about the furious angah part in that there title. Now pay attention, boy!

(Why oh why hasn’t anyone ever done a live action Foghorn Leghorn movie? That’s what I want to know. A live actor portraying a cartoon rooster portraying a live actor. Recursive loop is recursive. Win!)

I’ve been liking my Warrior quite a bit over the last few days. I shifted to dual wield swords Fury spec, and blew through the last 13 levels. I dinged 61 last night, and there’s gonna be no sleep ’til Brooklyn or Bust, baby.

I’ve been having so MUCH fun, in fact, that I looked ahead to see when I could finally get Titan’s Grip.

Level 69? You can’t get your max Talent Tree ability until 69 now? Gaaah!

So anyway… I’ve got one of the Bloodied Arcanite Reapers, those wonderful two-handed axes, enchanted with Crusader. Okay, to be honest, I’ve got one of every type of Heirloom currently in the game except for the ring, I’m always too busy with that real life thing to be in the Saturday fishing tournament. I’ve even got two of each Trinket, and the old Emblem daggers.

But here’s the thing. With the Titan’s Grip thingie, and the way Orcs get Expertise from axes, does it sound like a good idea to dual wield Heirloom Bloodied Arcanite Reapers?

It’s not that hard to get another one, because I’ve got a character maxed out with the Argent Tournament. Heirlooms for Justice Points is a sucker’s game, the markup is ridonkulous, but for Crusader’s Seals, it’s just right.

You see, a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper costs 95 Crusader’s Seals. That sounds like a lot, right? The thing is, since 4.0 went live, getting a Crusader Seal in your blue bag from some of the dailies is now guaranteed. Something like Threat From Above, which of course my Druid can still solo easily, is now worth 3 Seals all by itself. And when you unlock all of Argent Tournament, there are all those extra dailies that give Crusaders Seals.

Even without running ToC, I’m pulling in 12 Seals a day, easy. I could get more crammed into a day, but why bother? It’s not like I’d be 69 by Friday.

But should I? For those of you with Fury Warriors, does  it sound like something that would be worth doing, for the fun of it as well as the gobs and gobs of DPS? My Hit Rating obviously would be in the tank, so whaddaya think?

Oh, and for those folks that may be mourning their “self heal” Blood spec Death Knight, let me tell you, your Blood spec didn’t go away. It simply moved to Fury Warriors. Between Bloodthirst and Victory Rush, and with the Glyphs that extend Victory Rush’s duration and effectiveness and the Glyph to increase healing from Bloodthirst, I’m never below full unless I’ve got 4 or more mobs on me. I sneer at Elites with scorn. /scorn!

Frankly, what with the haste/attack speed procs, it really does feel quite a bit like an old Blood spec Death Knight while running with Unholy Presence for the haste buff. And that’s a GOOD thing!

So, two points to the post. One, what advice do my Fury Warrior peeps have out there for dual wielding Bloodied Arcanite Reapers specifically, and Titan’s Grip in general, and two, hey, if you’re wanting Heirloom items and are kicking yourself for not buying before Justice points went live, go hit the Argent Tournament up for some cheap Seals.

And no, I’ve not abandoned my Frost Mage. Level 63 and growing!

Have fun, ya’all!

I’m embarrassed to admit that I blew this off the first couple of years on my main. I’m still chasing pets from doing Orphan quests.

This year I was fairly excited to begin the runs. I was determined this time that I’d grit my teeth and persevere through the PvP achievements to complete the overall week as one step closer to “What a Long Strange Trip”, and also, this would be the first time doing it on the Horde side.

Of course, the pets you can get are the same, but I’d never dragged the Orphan around Barrens before.

It didn’t take long to complete both Shattrath and Orgrimmar Orphan quest chains. I ate a bunch of sweets in front of a wanna-be rocking Blood Elf brat, and I even killed a King in front of her.

Not exactly sure what message I’m supposed to be trying to send her by killing a King before her very green eyes. That this too must pass? That no matter how important you are, a dagger between the shoulder blades will really crimp your style? That 5 max level and geared players can kick one person’s butt if you all gang up on him at the same time?

Hmm. Those are all pretty good lessons to learn after all.

Regardless, I turned in the Orphan chains, I completed all the quests, and picked two new pets, leaving only one more left to collect next year, Mr. Wiggles. What can I say, if I get a pet pig, it’ll be bacon a week later. Might as well leave him for last, prolong the pleasure of anticipating a fine lunch.

So, every achievement except the PvP ones are done, every Orphan quest chain except the Oracles turned in. Time to go to Dalaran, right?

I was well prepared for the PvP. Thanks to Cynwise’s outstanding guide to the event, I felt that I had at least a fighting chance to get it all done… IF I started early, of course. And if I went in prepared and determined to kick ass.

All set, ready to rock, queued for Arathi Basin and gonna kick some massive Gnome butt.

47 minutes in queue for AB later, and it pops…

1 minute after I finally decided to turn in the Orgrimmar orphan, and 2 minutes before I would have picked up the Dalaran Orphan chain. Or thought I would have.

Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

Okay, this time I’m going to make damn sure I’ve got my Orphan, and THEN I’ll queue. I just didn’t expect the delayed queue for a BG when PvP was a big part of Children’s Week achievements.

Off to Dalaran, and I talk to the fine lady who provides such a wonderful parenting example, as the Oracle and Wolvar children chase around, trying to kill each other.

She… she doesn’t want to entrust me with an Oracle orphan. /shocked!

I is a sad bear. But… but I can be good to him! Is true! Why wouldn’t you trust me? Look at this huge horny face! How could you not trust these horns!

And I really need that kid, lady, because there is this massive war going on between Horde and Alliance, and I need some little kid following me around, to watch me carve my name into the shattered, broken carcasses of a million little gnome bodies…

Hmmm. The light, it begins to dawn.

Okay, next time, I don’t mention Battlegrounds. And I hide the massive Harpoon I carry around. It needs the blood cleaned off again, anyway, before it rusts. And, umm, the armor. Okay, so it smells. I’ll clean it next time, I know how that Ick stench really does penetrate leather, but hell, after a few weeks of wearing it without a bath, you kinda stop noticing. 

I made some inquiries, and now the word is that it’s just a mistake. That really, the Orphan lady is supposed to be willing to talk to me, but that she might just be confused after the, um, good job I did watching that Wolvar brat last September.

Hopefully, she’ll get the word from on high that, no, really, it’s okay, his clothes were just in for cleaning, that’s why I turned him in naked (hey, he had some fur left! And the burns will fade sooner or later, the little crybaby. Won’t kill steal my ass.) and I already TOLD her he had those bruises when I got him, and oh yeah, it was his fault in the first place, I TOLD him not to stand that close to the edge of Aldor Rise. And by the way, what kind of a kid just runs right off the edge when you’re flying over in flight form?

And sure, so he got a little nibbled when I was fishing up Bull Lion fish for the Kalu’ak, I didn’t expect the kid to just leap in the water and swim after me. And boy, who knew the kid could swim that fast? No matter how far out into the ocean amongst the sharks and icebergs, no matter how fast I turned around, there he was, moving like a little furry torpedo. If he wanted to keep those toes, he should have used the shark repellant.

Ah well. I’m sure she’ll talk to me again. Just as soon as the bribes kick in.

Until then, I’ll be lonely and sad, for there are gnomes to extinguish, and it’s just no fun without an audience!

Just when everyone is choking down actual gameplay teasers being released in a flood, here I come with some non-informative post about a PUG run.

Hey, there’s only so much teaser BS a person can take in one day. You gotta have somewhere to go for a laugh, right?

Last night, I returned to the PUG for a turn or two on my Druid.

My lovely, beefy Tauren piece of awesomeness.

As a sidebar, I’d never really noticed how much I had grown to dislike the appearance of my very first, original female Night Elf character. When I started the game and chose my Druid, the male Night Elf options all looked terrible to me, and the Night Elf females looked pretty nice. I didn’t know about the whole “pole dancing” thing yet.

But the face I chose for the Druid just looked… well, vapid. Stupid. Irritatingly so. She looked like a valley girl, like, ya know?

Is it any wonder you hardly ever saw me in anything other than Bear, Cat or Tree?

But my Tauren… ah, my Tauren.

I love him so much, I want to heal in Tauren form. Screw going into Tree, I can’t see those horns!

Okay, anyway.

Oops! First, let me make clear, there ARE Night Elf females I do like. I think my Nelf Hunter Windstar looks awesome. She looks both sensitive and badass at the same time. It’s not Night Elf females in general, it was the choice I made in face design for my Druid in specific. You can’t change faces in the Barbershop. Doing a faction change, for that alone, is almost worth it.

Okay, anyway, anyway. Again.

(You know I do that with my grammer just to torque Kestrel, right? Shh, don’t tell him. Oh, and now some dots, everyone loves my dots…)

((Love you, Kestrel!))

(((Damnit, I spelled Grammar right above… I better fix that… okay, fixed. Moar dots!)))

I’m in a cheerful mood, so watch out, I don’t know where I’ll be driving this bus next!

Right. Where the heck was I? Oh, yeah, right.

[Queue Keanu voice]: Woah.

So there I was last night, all horny and everything, and wanting to build up my stockpile of Emblems.

I created this Hawt Blood Elf Hunter Chick (Which is kinda like a Sexy Blood Elf Biker Chick, but with a reddish colored cat with great big fangs like this ;-<) and she’s got two Heirloom Trinkets, some sexy Heirloom PvE shoulders and a chestpiece, and this big honking double-barreled PvP Heirloom shotgun.

It’s all good, the cute off the shoulder armor with the little red vest is precious, but the shottie? That’s so, like, Dwarf, you know?

Now, if the Shotgun had some taste and refinement, if it had the finishing touches found in a nice Holland and Holland over/under combo, if it came in a fine handcrafted ebony wood case with a few bottles of Mont Blanc, well…

But no, it’s entirely too plebian. It simply will not do.

But I did see just the thing in the latest Tiffany’s collection catalog, this very well shaped Heirloom Bone Bow,  that looked just the sort of thing for a Blood Elf with an eye towards style and sophistication. Perhaps with the 12 1/4″ shafted arrows with Northrend Shoveltusk ivory inlay, silver chased heads and rare black eagle feather fletching?

Yeah, those cost 65 Emblems, and my charge cards are all maxed out. And you don’t EVEN want to go there, but you know, it was Easter, all the stores had their new Spring collections out, what can you do, you know?

So anyway, that’s totally why I need Emblems right now.

Hey, let’s go on a pug!

I went into the LFD tool as a healer, because I pretty much have decided that I will only tank for friends from now on. I play for fun, or to achieve goals for other characters that are going to be fun, and being a tank for the groups I typically get just isn’t all that spiffy anymore.

I love tanking with friends, but strangers? Yeah, not so much.

On the flip side, I try to never be the person that does to other tanks what people do to drive ME to stop pugging as one. You pass it on, right?

I joined LFD, and right away got an Azjol-Nerub group. That’s a good thing, because AN is about as smooth and straightforward and fast as you can hope for in a pug, when it’s all about return on time invested. 5 Emblems, 15 minutes. Sweet!

You suspect it’s going to be one of those runs, when you don’t even have five in the group yet, and the tank has already pulled the first mobs.

You know it’s going to be one of those groups, when you just rounded the corner trying to catch up to “hopalong tankaday”, and you get a facefull of ignored Skirmisher all up in your roots.

So, yay, I self-heal through that, while tossing my HoTs around and begin getting down to serious healing. This group, tank included, are taking just a massive amount of fast damage.

Wow, what the heck?

I’m running the Gearscore addon these days, NOT to judge people’s worthiness to be in my groups, but for just this type of situation. By looking at each player’s portrait in the party, I quickly see I’ve got a Paladin tank with a 5600 Gearscore, I’ve got two players, Death Knight and Shadow Priest with 3K GS (or under, actually, both were like right on the edge of 3K) who are both in the same guild, and a Warlock at around 4K.

By way of comparison, my healing gear on my Druid is pretty solid from Emblems and Heroic PoS/FoS drops, and it’s gemmed and enchanted properly, and I’m at 4.8K GS. I’ve even got a Frost cloak. So 5600 tells me that’s someone in pretty good raiding gear, and 3K tells me a couple pretty new level 80s in mostly Blues and a few crafted Epics or drops, and 4K tells me the player is working their way up nicely.

Notice I make no judgments on skill at all here. I’m simply making assumptions on current gear level, where it may have come from, and set a few expectations on where they might be in terms of DPS and survivability.

It’s handy, as I said, specifically for situation like this. Because the tank actually says, while on the first boss, “C’mon DPS, wake up, you suck.”

Well, no, actually, considering the comparative levels of their gear, they’re doing pretty damn good. I’m very impressed with what the Shadow Priest is squeezing out of her gear, that’s a player spot on.

But okay, whatever, we’re moving too fast for me to type.

Boom, we get down to the next boss area, we’re flying along, killing, clearing, boss goes down, moving on.

We get to the two large mobs just before the last boss, and one of the players, the Shadow Priest I think, is back a ways. They haven’t caught up to us, and wonder of wonders, the tank didn’t just run ahead and pull without them.

But he DOES take the time to get bitchy in chat.

“Are you coming or what? We don’t have all day, get over here.”

I take the time to reply, “Since we’re sitting here waiting and you’re bored, how about buffing me with Kings, since you never gave anyone Paladin buffs yet?”

Yes, that’s right. A tank too lazy, too rushed or too ‘leet’ to bother buffing the group, not even doing the new standard “I’m too good to give you the buff you want, I’m giving everyone Kings” like you see most of the time these days. 

I get my Kings, and he shuts up.

For now. Oh yes, for now. But there is still one more boss, and this pull will tell me something.

Gear or skill? Care or indifference? Phoning it in or in it to win it?

One pull. We’ll see.

We clear the two mobs, we all line up on the King, and the Paladin runs in to pull.

Here’s the test. How did he pull?

He ran straight forward to the boss and stopped dead right there, boss facing the entrance ramp, and stayed there.

This is the loser way to tank the final boss in Azjol-Nerub.

Whether you want to call it laziness, ignorance, or just-didn’t-give-a-shit, bad tanks run forward on the last boss and stop.

Why?

Pound.

The last boss casts Pound. It has a long cast time, and when it goes off, he casts it in the direction he had originally been facing when he started casting. Well, most of the time. Sometimes he bugs and does whirl around if his main threat target is behind him, as the tank is supposed to be.

Oh, and Pound’s key characteristic is it does a shitload of damage to anyone standing within an area the shape of a cone in front of him. It’s a cone-shaped AoE.

It’s almost enough, sometimes it IS enough, to kill cloth or leather wearing players.

By running forward and stopping right there, the tank is leaving it to everyone else in the party to be aware of the mechanic, and run all the way the long way around the boss to get behind him, and during that time, of course, only instant cast spells and attacks are going off.

And if the other players aren’t aware of the mechanic, then when Pound goes off, guess what? Everyone standing somewhere in front of the damn bug king gets a big facefull of WHAM!

So, the tank ran in. Stood there. Kept the boss facing the ramp.

Not everyone ran around to the sides and back like I did. The Death Knight and Shadow Priest did, the Warlock didn’t.

The Warlock’s health plummeted to about 500, and my existing HoTs quickly pulled him back up.

The Paladin, who had run through the boss to get behind him when Pound started casting, lols in Party chat.

He did it on purpose, the worthless little prick, hoping to kill someone else.

Why? Why would someone do something like that?

The run had been smooth. The enemies all died. Nobody ran crazy. Everyone stayed on target. There was no chaos. My heals prevented sillyness and unnecessary deaths.

So why?

I tell the tank in party chat, “How about pulling the boss to face away from the party.”

He announces that you can’t move the boss after he casts Pound.

Well, he has managed to be technically accurate, while at the same time avoiding the fact I didn’t say shit about moving the boss DURING the Pound, I said move the boss to “face away from the party”.

On the second phase, sure as hell, he does it again, and the Warlock eats it again, and doesn’t die. Again, the “lol noob” rolls off the tanks’ lips.

I’m making sure that if nobody actually gets one shot, nobody dies.

Yes, not even the tank.

Phase three comes around, I’ve whispered the Warlock, and the only person that eats Pound is… the Tank. Who immediately throws a Party chat hissyfit.

Guess what?

He moved through the boss during the Pound cast, and the boss did his sometimes-seen bug and whirled around before it went off, nailing the tank.

Amusingly enough, the Shadow Priest, Warlock and Death Knight had all moved to the side during the cast, and didn’t eat it.

Oh, yeah, I was at the side too. Of course.

What? Hey, of course *I* know about the bug, I blogged about it a year ago. Or something like that. Back when it really hurt to get hit by Pound. Like, in Neolithic times, with the dinosaurs and shit.

The tank is hot. He ran through and got hit by Pound anyway, and that’s not fair.

Now, here is the question I have up to this point.

I’m the only one who has said a word, besides the tank, on the entire run. Not a peep out of anyone else while the tank has acted like an immature child.

Do you think the silence was due to not caring what an idiot thinks, or because they were afraid that if they said anything to show they didn’t appreciate the attitude, the tank would leave and the DPS would have a collapsed run on their hands?

Do YOU adjust your behavior, do you hold your tongue when insulted or ridiculed, so you don’t piss off your tank and maybe have him leave you in a fit of childish rage?

While you think of that, I’ll wrap the run up with a fun moment.

When the boss falls, the tank first rolls the Recount log of Damage done through Party chat, and then says, “God you all suck, I’ve got top DPS and I’m the tank.”

I immediately reply, having been primed for this bit of asshattery since the first boss, “You are a Paladin tank with a 5600 GS. The rest of the DPS has nowhere even close to your gear level, so what is your point?”

At the same time, the Death Knight says, “Well, if I was on my other character my DPS would be a little different, lol.”

The tank replies, “Well, the Warlock has 4K.”

To which I reply, “You are a complete moron. A MORON. Goodbye!”

/leave group.

The Warlock has 4K? This is your answer for being a dick about being a tank with the highest DPS? And a Paladin tank as well?

“Oooh, I only outgear you by 1600 gear score, how come I’m top DPS, you must all suck.”

Damnit, there are days, as I said in guild chat, where I just want to bitchslap the world.

Or, in this case, I’d like every tank with this kind of attitude to line up single file, perform a left face, and I’ll freaking ride down the line on a Harley doing 70 with my hand outstretched, to SLAP THEM ALL!!!

Do you do it? Do you eat your feelings and allow yourself to suffer indignities in silence just for the sake of not bruising a sensitive tanks’ ego, challenging his asshattedness, so that you get your run finished?

I now return you to your informative MMO Champion/Blues Tracker game announcements, still in progress.

I had a nice reader, Trystalia, send in an email that got me thinking once again about roads left untraveled.

She reminded me that I’d meant to do something… and then let myself get distracted.

Oooh, shiny!

What she did was mention an old post I wrote, once upon a time, about Azjul-Nerub, talking about tanking the first mobs and boss.

Particularly, addressing the Skirmisher game mechanic. 

I’ll direct you to the post if you’d like to see it for old times’ sake, but in essence, I was simply talking about the way the Skirmisher mobs respond normally as melee mobs at first, but after a set time delay they abrubtly drop aggro, become untauntable, and dash straight for the player furthest away from them, there to whack them on the head, hey diddle fol-le-roll. 

If left alive long enough, the Skirmishers bear down on clothies like a steam locomotive driving down on a tied-up, helpess maiden lying on the tracks. It’s quite frightening, when it’s you they come after. Briefly frightening, anyway.

These days, with the rapid rise in potential DPS, they are almost extinct as a problem. Most groups I see don’t even seem to realize there is anything different about them at all.

It was nice to be reminded of the post, mostly because Trystalia said knowing what the heck was going on with those idiots really helped her get her tank on in AN. The groups she tanked wasn’t focusing on them, so they’d have some wipes. I love hearing that something I wrote actually helped someone. 

The other thing it really did, as I said, was remind me that I had always meant to write more… about game mechanics and learning to be a tank.

Here’s the thing. And here’s where it might get ugly.

Being a tank has a lot in common with being a raid leader.

For good or bad, with the rise of PUGs, more and more the tank is expected to be the leader, set the pace, make the decisions and lead the group.

When you zone into a Heroic PUG (or PUG Raid) as the tank, you really need to understand what is going to happen in the upcoming fights. If you haven’t seen the fights before, or only seen them in another role with a tank that maintained his silence, then you’re going to need to do some research on your own to prepare.

It’s your responsibility, now. You signed up as tank, and yes, that does mean you are saying you know what you’re doing, not just with your class abilities, but in leading the group as a whole.

If you are not confident, in your own mind, that you know what to expect, then you’re not prepared enough to do the best you can.

You need to understand the mechanics of each encounter, and you also need to understand the basics of all the abilities all the other classes have to draw on. You cannot expect everyone else to know what you expect them to do, and just do it.

Yes, you should be able to trust other players to know how to play their own class, but as the tank, it is up to you to specify that you want the Priest to keep the target you marked with a Moon shackled during the entire pull, and leave him for last. Or that you want the Hunter to use Freezing Arrow to ice trap the Hunter or Mage on each successive wave during Halls of Reflection, to keep the overall ranged damage down during the fights. The other players know they can do it, but in most cases they expect to be told if you want them to or not.

You need to know not only who to pull and how, but also know what the mobs will do that other classes can counter-act, nullify, cleanse and overcome with their abilities. You need to know that a boss or mob can and will Fear the group, and if there is a Shaman in the group, make a point to ask for Tremor Totem to cut down on silly running around.

Did you know Priests used to actually be asked to Fear Ward? No, really.

Above all, you need to be able to communicate, to direct those other players in what is coming so that they are prepared. They need to know exactly what to expect, and you as the tank need to provide clear directions on what you want them to do in special circumstances.

There is one last thing you must do, that is the hardest thing of all, especially with strangers. You really have to be brave enough to ask other people to do something other than mindlessly following along doing DPS or Heals. Expect some to be pissed at slowing down even for a second, but you have to be able to do it. And once you specify what you want someone to do, you have to trust them to do it on their own. You need to lead from the front as the tank, focus on doing your own job to the best of your ability, and trust that everyone will work together as a team and do the things that will make the run work.

That is the ideal. That should be every player’s ultimate goal in group play. To play with knowledge, with skill, and as a fine-tuned team, making every encounter you face seem smooth and effortless. To make the game look easy to any outsider. 

To be a master of the game.

Does that description characterize the runs you go on?

Do you try your best, study the encounters from afar, and stand prepared to Ice Trap or Shackle or Feign Death or Misdirect or use Tricks of the Trade and Fan of Knives? Do you watch your aggro, Misdirect incoming mobs to the tank, know to kill the Skirmishers first and foremost, know what happens when King Dred raises his claws in a threatening manner?

Or do you resent anything that requires you to hit any button that does not directly apply to a DPS rotation? Do you resent it when a healer doesn’t keep you alive while you stand in the green slime, so you are forced to move away, losing precious seconds of your DPS rotation? Do you resent it when you have to Feign Death for a millisecond because you were overtaking the Tank on aggro?

If you intend to play the game in a group environment, you should not be satisfied by ’phoning it in’ and just mindlessly following a rotation no matter what. That’s fine in solo play, where no one suffers for your lack of skill or poor performance but yourself.

If you have no interest in actually trying to be the best you can be at what you do, why are you even doing it? Go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure and pick out a pretty sparkly wand with a hair bow and leave the rest of us alone, okay? 

What you’ll see in PUG after PUG is a lack of communication, a tendency to brute force everything, and at the first sign of trouble or a wipe, somebody will blame a bad tank for not holding aggro, or a bad healer for not keeping everyone alive, and drop group.

Do you buy into it? Is that really your view on how the game works when you play properly?

One prevalent attitude I’ve noticed is that raids are considered important enough to study, practise and learn about. To prepare for.

Heroic instances? Those are the places you go on your own to get your Emblems, lowering yourself to do content that is beneath your gear score, but what the heck, you’ll demean yourself to get your daily two Emblems of Frost if you have to.

There is no respect for the content, or the players around you. If people stop for two seconds to say something, to communicate, to do anything other than chain pull through a brute force approach, then the pissyness comes out fast.

I’ll be blunt. If you think that having 5500 DPS in Drak’theron Keep makes you shit hot, and that’s all that matters, then I’ve got news for you, sunshine; it doesn’t mean jack shit. It just means you’ve got good gear, not that you know how to play.

Any moron can stand there looking cute and repeat a chain of attack moves as instructed by Elitist Jerks. ANY moron. That many people do not visit Elitist Jerks to aid them in optimizing a DPS rotation just makes those that do think they are truly teh aw3some.

That does not make you a good player. A good player is not someone that can stand still and mash buttons in the right order to pump out DPS up to the potential permitted by gear and spec, while standing still and ignoring Mana or Threat levels.

Sorry, it doesn’t. The good players are the ones that are doing all the little things to keep the group alive and stable while you are playing Lone Ranger for the sake of your DPS meter e-peen. 

A good player is one that knows all those OTHER abilities of their class, and will use them when the situation calls for it, in their best judgment, or when called upon by their teammates, even if that means their DPS drops by a couple hundred on that pull.

A good player is one that knows the mechanics of the encouters they are going up against, is mentally prepared for the fight, and is ready to MOVE THEIR ASS and use class abilities other than DPS when necessary to ensure the success of the team.

That Skirmisher situation mentioned above?

Trystalia was glad to know about the Skirmisher mechanic, because she had problems with most runs, experiencing at least a wipe or two each time as the healer went down, and she was hurt for consistently being blamed for losing aggro.

She was blamed by pissy little snots for losing aggro on the Skirmishers.

Guess what, a good player of a DPS class knows that the Skirmisher needs to go down firstest and fastest, because in a few seconds it’s going to drop aggro from the tank and charge the person furthest away, and whomp them good.

You know, when the Skirmisher runs free, it’s not a failure on the part of the tank, it’s a failure on the part of the DPS. The death of the Skirmisher is a DPS race, pure and simple. If the Skirmisher nails a non-tank, then the DPS failed. Period. Bitch at yourself, not the tank, because you failed.

A smart Healer on those pulls will make sure they’re not the most distant from the tank, so that if/when the Skirmisher runs free, the Healer isn’t the one to go down, and they can heal someone through getting pounded.

Let’s use another example I see all the time, of mindless brute force in an inappropriate situation.

Heroic Halls of Stone, on the last boss, Sjonnir the Ironshaper. Sjonnir has a Lightning Shield, a Lightning Ring, applies Static Charge to a target, and taken all together they do hellacious group AoE damage to people close to him if those people all dogpile on top of him and hang out as a brute force approach.

He also does a Chain Lightning for up to 3 jumps, and stacks a debuff on players that causes you to take even more damage from Nature attacks (like all that Lightning), which stacks up to 20 times.  TWENTY TIMES.

God, I feel like shouting OVER 9 THOUSAND.

There are also adds that come rolling in from each side, and when ignored, inevitably they gain Healer aggro and start interrupting/slowing the Healer’s cast times just when everyone needs heals the most from the Ring of Fire… the Ring of Fire. Er, Lightning. Sorry, flashback.

What do I see? I see people literally all piling on top of Sjonnir, EVEN THE HEALER, getting as close as possible so that everyone can ignore the adds, trusting the tank’s AoE threat to grab them, and try to brute force him down fast. Inevitably, that leaves everyone within melee range and chain bouncing range of every single high damage ability that Sjonnir can do. AND also puts them all within range of the stacking debuff.

This is Halls of Stone, people. This is not a Halls of Reflection run, it’s not even Trial of the Champions.

And still, time after time, I see 5200+ gear score groups die by droves and even wipe on Sjonnir. 

After all, it’s just a Heroic, right? It’s easy mode, noob tank, noob healer, you all suck, /leave group in a huff.

Smart groups take the extra 3 seconds to decide that the tank will hold the boss in the center, the ranged will all spread out to prevent chain hopping lightning, a melee DPS or two (if present) will take the adds and keep them off the healer, and guess what?

The Healer is left to focus on the few players still in melee range of Sjonnir, the adds are never an issue, the Chain Lightning doesn’t jump 3 times, most people don’t get affected by the melee range AoE, and even the Static Charge is only a momentary nuisance on 1 or at most 2 people.

Almost as though the instance was designed to favor the mentally prepared, and those that take 3 seconds to formulate and share a plan.

I cannot count the number of Halls of Stone runs I’ve seen, across all my characters, where everyone just piled on in, even the ranged and healer, and then it’s a race to see if the entire group wipes before the boss dies. 

It’s disgusting, and people who play that way should be bloody well ashamed of themselves. If you’re not going to take the time to learn how to manage game mechanics and play your class in Halls of Stone, when the heck were you intending to start? Ulduar?

ICC?

I am, finally, getting to my point, and my point is this;

If you intend to tank, study the game mechanics of the mobs and bosses in advance, so you know what to expect. You will gain confidence and feel better prepared.

Give the encounters and your teammates the same amount of respect you would in a raid. A group activity is still a group activity, even if it’s with strangers, and it’s fewer people. Every instance is an opportunity to hone your skills and practise for the real serious shit.

Prepare properly. Take notes on what special problems there can be, find out who has abilities that can counter those problems, and use your judgment and experience to decide which game mechanics can be ignored and bulled on through, and which ones deserve your time and attention to nullify.

If you want to tank, even if you’ve seen all the fights as DPS, study them from the point of view of the leader. The organizer. The dungeon guide. You will have to explain them to other people, and that means you need to be able to articulate fast, with minimal typing. The better you understand the problem, the better you will be able to share your ideas and plans.

If you know what to expect, then you will feel much more confident in doing your job. I promise you.

At the very least, you will begin to learn that sometimes, when you might have thought you simply lost aggro from over eager DPS, you actually lost aggro due to built-in game mechanics. Or that the group wiped not because you failed to have aggro, but because the wrong mob was targeted for death first, and he had abilities that hit like a brick shithouse.

It may look from the outside like every pull and every boss in a Heroic is just “grab ‘em and go”, but that’s not the recipe for success.

Tanks, knowledge really is power.

On the first boss in Old Kingdoms, know that the boss becomes invulnerable when the add spawns, and make sure you grab that add. After all, everyone that is DPS should be trying to kill it fast so you can all get back on the boss, right?

On the Etherial boss in Violet Hold, know that standing there and getting nailed by the summoned orbs is a sure prescription for pain, even in Tier 9. Don’t be afraid to move your ass a little.

If you prepare yourself, yes, you will find that a lot of things can be forced, game mechanics can be ignored.

With gear level availability the way it is, though, there is no excuse for you to be found dead in Halls of Stone because you were in Brann’s chamber fighting wave after wave, and you stood in the big golden beams of death and died during Phase 3. When the golden beam hits your ass, MOVE!

Yes, even the Tank.

It’s disheartening, it really is.

Not that people are getting used to using brute force to solve all their problems, no. No, that’s expected and, given the current state of affairs, inevitable.

No, it’s disheartening how often people try and brute force things because they don’t know any better, and then when they fail in a Heroic, they lash out at the tank or healer, dump their anger out on the rest of the party, and then abandon group.

Don’t be like that. Take pride in what you do, even if other people around you don’t.

If you take the time to upgrade your gear, gem it, enchant it, plan your DPS rotations or set up your healing macros, or study how to generate and hold threat, then take it that next step further. Do what you can to learn the fights, the encounters and mechanics, and when you see yourself in that instance, know what mob will do what, and how you can deal with it.

One last thing.

Don’t be shy about communicating.

If you know what’s about to happen, you go ahead and try and offer some suggestions for a smooth encounter. If you’re rebuffed, or ignored, or even ridiculed for it, don’t take it as a sign that you are in the wrong. No, take it as a sign that those people who reacted in that way are poor players, or that they don’t respect you or the game itself. That makes them prime candidates for your ignore list so you don’t see them again in the future. 

When you do meet someone that plays well, knows what they’re doing, and is open to a plan, add them to your friends list. Build a network of people that actually give a shit.

In time, maybe you’ll forget that the other kind of player ever existed.

Last night, the Druid Q&A by Ghostcrawler and the Blizzard Community Team went live, and I read it, chuckled a bit, and hit Lady Jess with the high points I knew she would enjoy. Sure enough, I sent her into a Jessrage. All in good fun, of course.

Thing is, there’s a lot of nice discussion about the past, current and future overarching direction of the Druid class, but it was short on specifics I really felt needed to be discussed, at least from a Feral point of view. There was some confirmation that Feral tree split spec for either optimized Cat or Bear is working as intended, there was the surprising idea that they would consider changing things so that we would have to shift frequently, apparently because they want to see us wearing the artwork of the gear they designed (note: I stay in forms because I chose the Druid FOR it’s forms… me choosing to be in a Bear form all the time should be, in my opinion, considered a class design WIN, not a freaking problem. FWIW, anyway.).

But, there was nothing in the Q&A I was all that enthusiastic about talking about. I came up with what I thought would be a cute name for a post about it, “QQ&A”, but there wasn’t even anything I was particularly enthusiastic about crying over.

See, I already had two plans for blog posts for this week, and that’s not even counting the PBeM story post I’m still in the middle of, that is with Lauchlin, but that I scrapped because in my humble opinion it drifted into ‘teh suck’.

I’m enthusiastic about writing these other things, and not the Druid Q&A. So, I’m not gonna talk about it.

It’s not that I’m not enthusiastic about Druids. Far from it, I have literally done nothing BUT play my Druid with delight for weeks now, both Tank and Heals.

What brings me back blogging time after time? I’m still enthusisatic about what I do. There’s always something new, and I go bounce/bounce/bounce my Big Bear Butt off doing it. It ain’t never boring. If things seem quiet, well hey, bring your own fun!

Here’s a few examples of the things we’ve done lately, things that I’ve been having fun with.

I like soloing things as a Bear, but it’s too easy doing old world stuff. So, the thought occured to me, I’ve got this level 80 Hunter that is all decked out for raiding as a BM with a Spirit Kitty… why not Dual Spec my Hunter… as another Beastmaster? TWO Beastmaster specs? I can have my second spec be strictly designed to maximize pet survivability and damage, and I could take my Bear pet (named “Clawsome”), and I could go have fun soloing Attumen, a mount soloing spec-and-pet system.

Basically, I could be a Bear tank two ways. :) Maybe even see if my guild is crazy enough to let me do a Heroic with my Bear pet tanking. Sigh. It’s just… something that sounds fun, and gets my enthusiasm for new things going, ya know? So yeah, I got the Dual Spec and pet and all, haven’t had a chance to go take down Attumen. Why? Because while on the way, literally, to Karazhan, landing in Duskwood, Ratshag and his lovely and talented fiancé Shianti wanted me to come do Heroic Violet Hold.

I do so… and then have to go to bed. And later that same night, I’m told, Shianti liked my idea of doing Karazhan SO MUCH that she wanted to go try Attumen right away that night… and the damn Attumen mount dropped, and she got it.

That would have been MY instance of Karazhan… so by rights, that’s my mount drop she got. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. It was all an evil plot by Ratters, I’m sure.

Okay, another example.

I’ve been doing Argent Tournament dailies every day, to build up seals and work towards Crusader so when the 3.2 changes hit and Heirloom chestpieces are available, I can just pick one up immediately. As of last night, I’m done with Darnassus and Exodar.

Well, I’m banging around doing Threat with Jardal and Kaelynn, and Barre asks in Guild chat if anyone has the Molton Core zone drop enchant, Enchant Weapon – Spell Power.

It’s a rare drop in Molten Core, a weapon enchant that does +30 Spell Power and that can be applied to level 1 weapons… like Heirloom weapons.

Nobody does, and someone mentions Jess spent two days in Trade channel before she found someone that could do it.

Well, heck, right? I ask Jardal and Kaelynn if either has an enchanter. Jardal does, a level 62 Prot specced Paladin.

So I ask him if he’d like to bang around in Molten Core, like right after dailies, see if the enchant drops? Sure, sure.

So Jardal, Kaelynn and her 80 Rogue, my Druid tank and a few guildies all head into Molten Core on the spur of the moment of a Monday night, just for the heck of it.

We ended up doing a 100% full clear that night, just because it was so easy with level 80 tank, healer and 3 to 4 DPS to keep going.

And guess what?

Sure as hell, the Enchant Weapon – Spell Power does, in fact, drop. Thing has, according to WoWhead, a 1% drop chance on only a few bosses… and even if Blizzard upped it’s drop chance recently, it’s not BoP anymore, so it is farmable, and it’s still pretty rare. And now we have someone in guild that can do it. :)

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to remind yourself, the game is truly great, but shouldn’t be expected to always have to come up with new content, and work to keep your bored short attention span mind all engaged.

Sometimes, it’s nice to remember, you can take the initiative to look for things that sounds fun yourself, and then go out and do them

If you think about WoW, and you can literally find nothing about the game that you feel enthusiastic about, then it’s not really the game’s fault in my opinion. Maybe it’s time for you to go find something you ARE enthusiastic about and do it! Take a break, you know?

Fantasy Football Leagues are about set to kick off here in the States, Summer is here and there’s lots of stuff to do out of the house, there are great books and movies out there, concerts, whatever. Go out, go bowling, dance at a club, have fun. Get enthusiastic with life.

I still find WoW keeps me coming back, having fun and talking about it.

I guess I’m just getting pickier about what I write about, though.

Druid Q&A? I’ll let WoW.com handle the dissection if that’s all right with you folks.

Cassie mentioned it to me, I’ve been oblivious lately to general chat… but I am so taking part tonight!

Remember that whole ‘Isle of Quel’danas’ thing we were so excited about way back when? Tons of new daily quests? A new instance? A new raid area? A new badge vendor?

Pretty cool, right?

All the servers scrambled to be the first to do tons of daily quests, as each new stage of content in the Isle of Quel’danas had to be unlocked by server participation.

And what happened?

As soon as the new Badge of Honor reward vendor got unlocked, everyone stopped caring.

Well, a couple stages or so AFTER the Badge lady is the gem vendor recipe lady… she has a quest for you to do. It’s a damn cool quest, I loved it.

You get asked to go retrieve some stuff from the high plateau of southwest Hellfire Peninsula.

The catch is, what you gotta retrieve is buried… and it requires a sensitive sniffer to figure out where the tender roots you want are located.

It’s a damn truffle hunt!

You have to fly up to that plateau… you get to tame a Ravager as your pet! Just like hunters get pets! You get him as a combat pet to send out to whack stuff, the whole thing. Very fun! C’mon, isn’t that reason enough to go?

And one of the Ravager’s special abilities is to sniff out these tender truffles… I mean roots… and then you scavenge the suckas and return to the Isle of Quel’danas and turn them in.

And if you do this quest enough on your server, the gem recipe vendor lady will… have gem recipes to sell. Epic gem recipes. NICE epic gem cutting recipes.

Windburn is, of course, a maxed out Jewelcrafter with many rare recipes, such as Solid Star of Elune and Runed Living Ruby. I wants those Epic recipes.

But… I checked last night, vendor is still at 95%. It’s heartbreaking!

And I mention this to my wife, and she tells me that one of the best guilds Alliance side on Kael’thas, as far as friendliness and progression are concerned, Vendetta, has gotten sick of it too.

And they are taking action!

Check out this post on the Official WoW Kael’thas realm forums made by Showtyme of Vendetta;

In an attempt to hasten the arrival of the gem-vendor, Vendetta will be holding a quest lottery. The rules are simple. A member of the team will be in Shattrath ready to share the quest “discovering your roots”. More team members will be at Razorthorn Rise clearing out mobs and uncovering roots for you. Simply pick up the roots you see on the ground and fly back to shat and port to Quel’Danas. Turn in the quest. A final member of the team will be at the quest turn ready to port you back to Shattrath where the original team member will be waiting for you. In exchange for doing this we will give you 3g and put your name on a spreadsheet. You can do this as many times as you have toons per day until the vendor opens. Every time you do it on a main or alt you receive another chance to win the grand prize, which is a ZA Bear mount!!!!So its a win for you and the whole server, you get 3g per day per toon that does the quest and each time you do it your name is added into the pool. Once the vendor reaches 100% the event will be complete and the lottery will be held. The winner will be notified in-game via mail and there name will be posted in this thread. The bear run will then be set up for a time convenient for the winner and the server can finally get the gems they need!!

Any questions contact Showtyme in game. The offer will start Wednesday the 25th at noon server time. in front of the portal to Quel’Danas. Good luck!

Now that’s hardcore awesome…

I love the idea of working together like that. And would I love a bear mount? Sure!

But I am going to participate in this on all three 70s I have, NOT in desperate hopes of a bear mount, I have the awesome birdie mount from Heroic Sethekk halls to love. Okay, if I won Windshadow the Bear tank WOULD be riding a warbear. It is mandatory. Sorry, I slipped into some bear-on-bear daydreaming there. My bad.

But no, I’m going to take part each day because this is just an awesome attempt by a guild of great folks to get some hustle going! Get that damn gem lady in bizness!

If you’re on Kael’thas, and you’ve been blowing off the quest… please go out there and get some move on!

But I still remember the first time I saw it, as a series of pictures, not as a Youtube, and mailed it to my bud Manny.

Rememeber that, Manny? We’d only been playing for a little while, you on Kortenharig the short and hairy dwarf hunter, and me on the uber noob Windshadow the kitty drood. We saw this and we just about died laughing.

Anyway, maybe some of you have forgotten… maybe some of you have never seen it…

 If so… bless you. No sound needed, just pictures. Enjoy.

Now, she is driving me nuts.

“Since I dinged 70, there is nothing to do!” she says.

I stare at her disbelievingly.

“lolwut”, I reply.

I then mentally ran over all that we have done since she dinged 70, just in the last week.

We’ve run Steamvaults, Heroic Slave Pens, regular Underbog, regular Auchenai Crypts, Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace.

Also, she has completed the Ogri’la chain of quests and has unlocked most of the daily quests in Ogri’la and mastered the Bombing Run, and the Simon Says crap (with the assistance of the addon Ogri’Lazy, might I add).

She has done tons of Netherstorm quest chains, the prelims of Netherwing faction rep (we should be doing Zuluhed the Whacked sometime this week), and she has done the soloable part of Karazhan key attunement, and just needs to start the key frag portion with her Shadow Labs run.

She even has her first epic, since together we farmed the mats needed to make the Shadowprowler Chestguard, and a guildie, Gandaulf, did the crafting last night. And with Ogri’la questing underway, the Shard-bound Bracers are on their way. Plus of course getting Skettis rep from the Bombing Runs, so the trinket from Skettis is also being worked towards.

For the love of Elune, wtf more do you want? It’s only been a week!

“But there’s nothing to solo anymore”, she replies. “I soloed everything up to level 70, and now everything but PvP needs a group. It sucks.”

….. Damn, you know what? She’s got a good point.

Anyone got any ideas for stuff to have fun soloing now that she’s 70?

Me, I hit this point, I start an alt. I guess I never really thought of it before.

Szobi said:
Quite a nice guide. Thanks to you I finally did the chain and started the Ogri’la dailies.As for wrangling: getting them down below 20% is sufficient to wrangle. I found it most comfortable to do in bear form, I tended to over-dps in cat.As for the relics: I found whispering to myself better than writing down on paper. I just number the pads from one to four, then pop enter and write the sequence down. There’s also a mod here to keep track of it: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/7774/but i haven’t tried it yet.

Thank you for the comments Szobi. You’re right, the amount is 20%, and as soon as I see the comment on being able to be wrangled, I try to switch to caster form instantly to stop doing DPS. I like your idea of not letting it get so close before switching forms, and switching to bear instead of caster to slow down the pain. Thank you very much, I’ll have to do that. Although if I do that, how will I ever level my staff skill? Lol.

As far as the addon is concerned, on your suggestion I downloaded it and took it for a spin.

The addon is called Ogri’lazy, and what it does is, when you start the Relics Emanations quest, it automatically opens a small popup on your screen that has some empty space, and four colored icon buttons.

As you can see from the image above, the box that appears has four colored icons in the right hand side. In the image, the colors of the icon buttons are aligned with the four mini-game buttons from the Relics Emanations.

In real life, the buttons do not align themselves. Also, be aware the box appears only after you have activated the quest. (Maybe you can open the box early. I didn’t see a way to yet though.) So when you start the quest by inserting your Apexis Shard, the box pops up and you need to either have already spun and zoomed your view so that your colors will match, or take the time to do so now.

As the mini-lightning bolt lights up each button, you must physically click each of the tiny icon buttons in the addon window. This adds an icon to your string in the addon. As you can see from the picture, I am at round 6 of the quest when the screenie was taken.

As soon as the mini-game has finished activating buttons, you can follow the sequence as shown in your addon window.

The neat thing is, as you click on a button, one of the buttons vanishes from the addon window, so you can always keep track of which color is next.

I have NOT tested a few things on it… such as, if I click the wrong color by mistake, does the displayed icon in the addon window vanish anyway? I wonder if it is looking for a correct button press, or just ANY button press to trigger the icon to vanish.

At any rate, I used it successfully, first time, and I have to say that it worked better than paper and pen.

Personally, for all the people that wrote in suggesting to use the /say box to keep track….

What can I say? Sometimes I’m just not that bright. I like the /say box method now that I’ve tried it, but I’ll probably give the addon a chance for a while, since I installed it already.

If you followed the steps listed in Part Two, then you are now Neutral with Ogri’la, and are ready and eager to get started on some rep grinding and daily questing.

The Ogri’la camp questing begins with Chu’a’lor at (29, 57), way up high at Ogri’la in the Blades’ Edge Plateau.

Ogri’la and Skyguard Outpost combined is the second major Daily Quest hub. Ogri’la is in the south half of the camp, and the Outpost is in the north.

If this is your first time ascending to the western plateau, I advise you to begin your journey from the lower areas of Blades’ Edge around the Sylvanaar Alliance base at (37, 64).

The reason for this is that, just to the north and south of Ogri’la, are two Forge Camps, and each camp is equipped with an array of Flak Cannon that WILL shoot your ass down if you are flying a standard speed flight mount. And I honestly don’t want your first visit to Ogri’la to consist of “Oh boy this is gonna be fun, hey what the hell was that green flash, whoa! Aw, crap.”

The quests you find here will keep you in the western part of the Blades’ Edge Plateau.

Warning – Ogri’la is a hostile place.

It is bordered in the east by fields of crystals being mined by hostile Flayers. There are hostile Hellboars and neutral Aether Rays that wander about the crystal plains.

The plateau is bordered by Forge Camp: Terror to the south (mostly fire demons) and Forge Camp: Wrath to the north (mostly Shadow demons). Both Forge Camps are defended from aerial visitors by Flak Cannon emplacements.

Wandering groups of warlocks will path down from Forge Camp: Wrath, infecting the wildlife they pass with a disease. If you get too close, even airborne, they will attack you.

There is a dragon flying over the plateau, mostly over the area immediately to the east of Ogri’la. If you fly too high, you are likely to aggro it.

And there are little complexes of crystals called Apexis Relics, surrounding a single honking big crystal called an Apexis Monument. The complex is camped by hostile non-elite mobs that make you have to clear the area and work fast to use the Apexis Relics for your dailies before they respawn.

Basically, maintain your spacial awareness here. Everything except the Aether Rays wants to eat you.

The Dailies

Your first step is to speak with Chu’a’lor in Ogri’la. You will not be able to interact with the Skyguard Outpost quest givers until some Ogri’la quests are completed first.

Chu’a’lor will first assign you The Crystals – a simple gather quest to collect 5 Apexis Shards. These Apexis Shards can drop from just about any mob here, so go out and kill some Hellboars or Flayers until you get them.

A note about apexis shards; Most Daily Quests awards 15 apexis shards, each turn in. You’ll quickly increase your supply. They accumulate in stacks of 250. They get used for many things; energizing devices, summoning bosses, summoning dragons, and buying your Ogri’la faction loot. My advice? Collect them until you have two full stacks, 250 Shards per stack, and then dump the rest until you summon and/or buy everything you want. You use 35 each time you summon a boss or dragon, so you want enough on hand.

After you hand the 5 apexis shards you gathered over to Chu’a’lor, he gives you the first of what I (and everyone else) have come to refer to as the ‘Simon Says’ quests, called An Apexis Relic.

An Apexis Relic requires you to travel to any of the Apexis Relics in the area, and use an apexis shard to activate it. You must follow the progression of steps to gain the Apexis Vibrations buff (6 successful rounds completed).

You must have an apexis shard to activate an Apexis Relic. The tall central crystal is an Apexis Monument; it is used to summon a boss. The smaller, outlying crystals are the Apexis Relics.

An Apexis Relic consists of a small projecting crystal, surrounded by 4 colored buttons flush to the ground.

When you click on the upright crystal of a Relic, it asks for an apexis shard. Using a shard activates the mini-game.

How it works

The first round of the game, the center crystal will fire off a mini-lightning bolt at one of the four colored buttons, chosen at random, causing it to briefly glow. It then waits for your response for a brief time. You must click on the colored button that it struck. This ends round 1.

The second round, the center crystal will fire its’ mini-lightning bolt at first one, then a second colored button, and wait for you. You must then click on the colored buttons, IN THE ORDER THEY WERE STRUCK, to continue.

This sequence will repeat, adding another colored button each time, until either you stop clicking (in which case nothing happens, and the mini-game eventually times out) or you click on the wrong button out of sequence, and you get struck by a red lightning bolt for 4000 damage. If you chose wrong, depending on which round of the game you were on, either you will have a second chance to choose correctly, or the mini-game will simply end and you will have to use a second Apexis Shard to start over.

To complete this first quest, you must successfully complete 6 full rounds. That is a sequence of 1 color, then 2 colors, then 3 colors, then 4, then 5, and then 6.

After you have completed 6 full rounds, you will be awarded the ‘Apexis Vibrations’ buff. The game will continue, but you can choose to simply walk away, your quest completed. For a brief time after achieving the Vibrations buff, your movement rate will be slowed.

Turning in this quest does two things.

It unlocks the Daily Quest: The Relics Emanation.
It opens a new quest from quest giver Torkus, Our Boy Wants To Be A Skyguard Ranger, required to open Skyguard Outpost for questing.

Daily Quest: The Relics Emanation
Rewards: 15 Apexis Shards
11 gold 99 silver
Reputation: Ogri’la +250

The Relics Emanation is the exact same quest as An Apexis Relic, except that you must complete 8 full rounds of Simon Says instead of 6.

My comments on The Relics Emanation.
I have seen many suggestions on how to do this quest. I will give you mine. I preface this by saying that I am exalted with Sha’tari, Ogri’la and Netherwing. I have done every tip I give you, many, many times. They have worked well for me, but you may find a different way that you like better. If you do, by all means post it in the comments!

First, I don’t recommend doing this quest if you are suffering graphics-jittery lag. The lightning bolts that light up the buttons may lag, causing you to miss seeing a button light up through no fault of your own. I have personally never experienced this lag while doing this quest. I have always been able to see which button was the next in the sequence, even if the sequence went very fast. But others have reported the problem, so I’m warning you ahead of time.

Preparation:
Get a small notepad and reliable pen or pencil, and keep it beside your keyboard. You will use it when the color combos get too long to easily keep track of.

Now, pick your Apexis Relic location, and clear all the mobs from the area. Stand as close to the center crystal as you can. Rotate your view so you are looking as close to straight down as you can, so that the four colored buttons are to the upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right of your screen.

At this point I arbitrarily assign each button a number, starting at the upper left and proceeding as though reading the buttons just like reading two lines on a page; upper left = 1, upper right = 2, then second line lower left = 3 and lower right = 4. If this is not automatically comfortable to you, find a pattern that is. The choice of which color is in which position is unimportant. You need to be able to repeat the sequence.

When you activate the Simon Says sequence, follow along as well as your memory lets you. I usually make it about 5 colors before I get too lazy to bother. When a color is lit up by the lightning bolt, I actually say the number I’ve assigned to that button out loud as a mnemonic aid. So if it hits upper right, upper right, lower left, lower right, I call out verbally 2, 2, 3, 4.

Once you are no longer comfortable following along by memory, after you have clicked your last button of your current sequence, let go the mouse and grab your pen and paper. As the lightning bolts strike the buttons, quickly write down the number you associated with it. Results may vary, but I had no problem writing down the numbers without looking away from the screen to see what I was doing.

As soon as the last button has been chosen by the relic, you simply look at the numbers you wrote and slowly click through the sequence. Make sure you wait and watch for each color you select to be accepted. Move too fast and it may not see that you clicked it, and zap you.

I usually end up the week with scratch notepads, with scrawled strings of numbers 6, 7 and 8 digits long, scattered around the house annoying my wife.

One last note. There are ALWAYS non-elite mobs standing on every Apexis Relic, and two on the Apexis Monument. These areas are heavily farmed for the Daily Quest, so if you walk up to one that does not have a mob, don’t use it, either choose another and clear both the Apexis Relic you are going to use, and clear out the two mobs on the Apexis Monument as well, or wait for respawns. It truly sucks to be 7 rounds into the Simon Says game and have the mobs spawn on top of you, or aggro from the Apexis Monument.

Okay, you’ve unlocked one Daily Quest.

Now you must complete Our Boy Wants To Be A Skyguard Ranger, given by Torkus.

Torkus wants an Unstable Flask of the Beast. It takes 10 apexis shards to buy one. You should have 15 apexis shards right now, a quest reward for The Relics Emanations.

Completing this quest will immediately open up the quest to Skyguard Outpost, but I recommend completing the follow up, A Fathers Duty, as well first.

The follow up, A Fathers Duty, is going to also need a flask, The Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer, which costs 10 apexis shards from a different source. You only need to farm 5 more.

Once you have 20 apexis shards total, there are two places you need to go to buy your flasks.

First, go to either (33, 41) or (30, 81). At either location there is a green forge with small green bubbles floating out of the top. That is the ‘store’ where, by clicking on it, you can choose to trade in your 10 apexis shards for an Unstable Flask of the Beast.

Now, fly to the far northern Blades Edge Plateau, to the Bash’ir Crystalforge at (54, 10). You’ll need to clear some mobs, but you can do so easily. Clicking on that ‘store’ allows you to use 10 apexis shards to buy your Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer.

When you turn in the first flask and complete Our Boy Wants To Be A Skyguard Ranger, a quest will open up from Chu’a’lor, The Skyguard Outpost, that leads to the Skyguard Outpost quests.

When you turn in the second flask and complete ‘A Fathers Duty’, it opens up a group quest. Once of those 5 man ‘summon a boss’ things I mentioned earlier. It also provides much comic humor as you follow the antics of Torkus Jr, and his attempts to join the Skyguard Rangers.

Now, accept The Skyguard Outpost and go north a bit to talk to Sky Commander Keller. He’ll send you to talk to Sky Sergeant Vanderlip (standing just 5 paces away).

Sky Sergeant Vanderlip assigns you Bombing Run. Bombing Run (and it’s daily follow up, Bomb Them Again) are your next Daily Quest here.

Bombing Run (Bomb Them Again)
Rewards:
15 apexis shards
11 gold 99 silver
Reputation:
Ogri’la +500
Sha’tari Skguard +500

That’s right, it gives BOTH Ogri’la AND Sha’tari rep. Not bad.

The purpose of this quest is for you to take a stack of bombs, and fly over to either Forge Camp: Wrath or Forge Camp: Terror, and destroy 15 stacks of Fel Cannonballs. The stacks have huge bright targeting arrows hovering overhead, making them clear and visible targets from a distance.

You must be able to select and use your bombs quickly. I recommend moving them to a hot button on your taskbar, so you don’t need to fumble with your bags.

The bombs you use are the same concept as the ones you used for bombing runs in Hellfire Penensula –You click/activate your bombs, and a ground-following cursor appears on the ground under your mouseview. If the cursor shows red, your cursor is out of range of your thrown bombs. If a bright green targeting circle appears, then you are within range. When your green targeting circle appears, click your mouse again to fire your bomb.

As you approach the Forge Camps while in flight form or on a flying mount, the Flak Cannons will start tracking on you, and after a second, they will start to fire a barrage of green fireballs in your general direction. They are pretty smart, and they will see your current direction of travel, and ‘lead’ you a bit to bring you down. If you are manuevering in zipping motions, changing direction and altitude constantly, you avoid them a little better.

If you are struck directly by a fireball, you are dismounted and knocked back in the direction the fireball was going. Also, the fireballs explode for green fire AOE clouds, just like flak, leaving mid-air or ground bursts that are persistant for a few seconds.

If you are hit, OR if you fly through the green fire, you WILL get hit by one or even two DOTs that will do 2000 damage EACH over time. And oh yeah, the DOTS will also serve to dismount you. So even if the fireball misses, being near enough will get you DOTed and dismounted anyway.

At least the falling damage can be minimized by Soft Fall, Levitate, Druids’ Cat Form, and Engineers’ Parachute Cloaks, among others.

Most people I see do this;
Line up on your target at a fixed altitude. Then, ready your bombs so you have your targeting cursor moving within range on the ground. Then, approaching the Fel Cannonball stack that is your target, move rapidly from side to side to try to throw off the Flak Cannons’ aim. The instant the targeting cursor is over the Fel Cannonball stack, click to release your bomb and then pull up/gain altitude rapidly and move out of range, away from the area.

The problems I have with this technique is that the green fireballs leave one hell of an AOE cloud, and you can think you did everything perfectly and fall to your death anyway.

So, now I’ll give you MY method. As a Druid, this is an easy, if slow, way of doing things. However, I have told others of my technique and I know that it works with a regular flight mount as well, if not as fast.

First, you stealth or fight your way to the ground area where a bunch of Fel Cannonball stacks are to be found. My favorite hunting grounds are the Fel Cannonballs at Forge Camp: Wrath (the northern camp, around 38, 38).

Clear the whole area of Mobs. None of them are elite, they have a chance to drop loot and cloth, and the elite Flak Cannons don’t attack you when you are on the ground.

With the area cleared of mobs, walk up to the Fel Cannonball stack. Activate your instant-cast flight form (or your flight mount) and once hovering in the air activate your bomb, target the stack, and fire as fast as you can.

As soon as you are mounted, the nearby Flak Cannon will begin to fire. However, you can get your bomb off and then DISMOUNT and run like hell, and about 30% of the time only get hit with one DOT. And since you ain’t taking falling damage, and there are no demons waiting below to rip you a new one, you eat/drink/heal/bandage and move on to the next.

If you stay mounted/airborne, even if youa re running on the ground, the Flak Cannon thinks you’re flying. So you have to dismount.

I used this method until I got my epic flight mount. Once I had my epic mount, what was a truly annoying chore became the most fun repeatable quest out here. I run Bomb Them Again just for fun now, because the speed difference on the epic mount makes you damn near untrackable by the fel cannons.

Completing Bombing Run the first time unlocks the Daily Quest: Bomb Them Again, and it also unlocks the last Daily Quest available at Neutral Ogri’la reputation, Wrangle Some Aether Rays, from Skyguard Katie.

Daily Quest: Wrangle More Aether Rays!
Reward: 11 gold 99 silver
Reputation: Ogri’la +350
Sha’tari Skyguard +350

This is pretty simple. You must go out there into the Blades’ Edge Plateau and use the lasso you are given to capture 5 neutral Aether Rays.

The tricky parts are that, as this is very easy, it is heavily farmed and people can be amazingly rude about getting the first hit in on a Aether Ray you just cleared the mobs for.

The second tricky part, is that Aether Rays don’t want to be lassoed. So you have to beat them into submission first. So you have to attack an Aether Ray, and beat them down to about 5% health before they will submit. When they submit, you will see a message that says “The Aether Ray Appears Ready to be Wrangled”. At this point you can use the Wrangling Rope to subdue them.

Why is this tricky? Well, frankly, because if you have good DPS gear, it can be hard to beat them just so far to subdue them, without killing them before you deploy the damn Wrangling Rope. Whatever you do, don’t use DOTs on them.

At this point, you are Neutral with Ogri’la, and you have 3 Daily Quests available to you here. If you add the two Daily Quests you have unlocked at Blackwind Landing, you have five Daily Quests yielding 59 gold, 95 silver, and two potions.

Once you reach Honored reputation with Ogri’la, a new quest chain becomes available that leads to the fourth and final Daily Quest in this area.

As this post has already gone on way too damn long though, I’m going to address that in the next section.

Have fun!