Queue for random daily dungeon.
Zone into Violet Hold.
Member of party immediately leaves party.
Said member was tank.
Well fuck.
Group re-queues to get new tank.
New tank zones in.
Buff up.
Start event.
First portal opens.
Tank is offline.
Well fuck.
We’ve got a ret pally, an ele shaman, a resto druid, and me – the mage.
Ret tank?
Hell no, ele shaman tank FTW.
He actually managed to tank up to the first boss.
Quick, resto druid swap to bear and ele shaman swap to resto!
Bear has never tanked a heroic, but I don’t think the shaman had either…
4-manned that shit with style.
So big props to Wrecum and Faelanna of Cairne.
…
What’s this? a second pug that didn’t suck?
That’s right, folks!
Got into a random AN the other night, 3 guys from Execution of Tortheldrin and a random DK.
The guilded guys are chatting it up in party, giving the pally tank a hard time about what a terrible tank he was.
The shaman gave me a run for my money on damage, it was nice to have a challenge.
Hadronox goes down.
Shaman says, “fuck Ari.”
Oh shit, what did I do?
“you were lighting him up”
He posts recount, I pulled 7.9k. And the tank held her the entire time. Shitty tank, indeed, lol.
Finish up, agree to stay together for more runs.
We did 6 instances total: AN, ToC, UK, DTK, Occ, and OK.
We started to fight the one boss with the volunteers in OK.
By the time someone finished typing if we wanted to go for the achievement, the first volunteer was already dead.
Oops.
The secret to fighting your team members on the last boss in OK?
Fuck strategy.
Let the DK grip you right into the center and just Arcane Explosion.
I used to try and actually CC one, and burst down another, kite them…
Fuck it. Blow them up.
The new Occulus is great.
My drake was sitting at 122.7k HP.
The shaman had connection issues so we ended up 4-manning most of the instance, including Eregos.
So hats off to Dominigo, Venril, and Rukn for a smashing good time.
clearcasting 
Heroics are sooo easy now. Ele shammy tanking? Doesn’t surprise me.
Last night we did an random heroic, got Oculus. We just all got red drakes and zerged, I died at 50% on Eregos and the others finished him off. Haha, too easy.
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Dammit, that would have gotten me 3 achievements that I need, lol.
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I did a bunch of random heroics last night on my mage. I made bank with the drops. I love how someone gearing up can just get everything with everyone cheering them on. :D
Although I did have a douche bag tank in Heroic HoL. The 3 dps were fresh 80s, I was the best geared out of all of us, and I am not even at all ilvl 200 yet. My fail mage does about 1600-1800 on trash and around 1500 on bosses. We got to the first boss, the tank pulled him with the lightning. I was the only one killing the adds. I said in party chat “kill the little guys!” After the boss was down, where only I had killed one of the little guys, some dipshit tells me “That’s why we didn’t kill them so we could get the achievement.” I replied “You get the achievement for killing him while he is charged, it has nothing to do with his adds you dipshit.”
At this point the tank decided to put recount, which we know doesn’t work cross realm, in chat and say that was why we were slow and sucked. I again piped up and said, “What do you really expect from fresh 80s?!” He was all, “Can’t I at least expect 2k?!” I said “No, 1-1.5k is average for a fresh 80.”
While he was yelling at us about our fail dps, he was already across the cauldron room and up the stairs. The poor rogue, who must have just hit 80 and was doing 900 something dps dropped group. I yelled at him some more, ignored him and dropped group as well.
Other than that group I had wonderful PuGs. I even got the drake in CoS :D Now I don’t have to buy my baby mage an epic mount.
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The newest Recount does seem to be working cross realm. I’ve had a couple groups where we link recount to compare cross-server and the numbers vary as much as you would expect them to same-server, within a percent or so.
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Well that’s good to know. His recount actually had me doing better dps than I had on my screen.
He was still a jerk though.
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Koalabear, 2k is average for a fresh 80. I’ve broken 2k as a mage and a deathknight prior to hitting 80, and I currently have a level 68 ret pally that pulls 1400. No, I’m not joking. DPS is not hard. Spec properly, gear properly, execute your rotation. The tank may be a jerk for calling everyone out, but his point is valid. Really, the only excuse I can think of that I consider valid for under 2k dps at level 80 is its your first toon, and you have no idea what rotation, spec, and proper gearing is.
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Yes but remember I’m petitioning to have you nerfed as a player. 1500 is perfectly acceptable for a fresh 80 that didn’t have a stockpile of gear ready to go. She’s also playing fire (which may have been cake for you) but I loathed it in 5-mans, and she’s probably not at hit cap.
Remember that diminishing returns hit harder the closer you get to 80. Since we have better gear already lined up, we won’t see that much of a difference in our output but a fresh 80 may see a sudden drop in performance until the gear catches up.
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I have only seen a few people who have been able to pull that off as a brand spanking new 80. No it is not average.
When I first hit 80 I was still in my heirloom gear and was thrilled to do 1400.
Hell when my warlock hit 80 almost a year ago it took a while for her to do 2k dps.
Not everyone knows their spec and rotation like they have been playing for years right out the door.
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/signs petition.
/goes out and get a bunch of fake ids
/sign petition a gabillion more times
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koalabear, you said “Not everyone knows their spec and rotation like they have been playing for years right out the door.”
I concede that point. Its perfectly valid. My only response is that you should be tackling normal dungeon content until you gain enough experience.
I’ll also concede the point that 2k dps is not average for a fresh 80, with the stipulation that 2k dps is average for the fresh 80 that is doing heroic content. Heroic content was not intended for average fresh 80s. That is why its called “Heroic”. If heroic dungeons were for the average fresh 80s, there wouldn’t be normal dungeon difficulty.
Consider this, and feel free to test my hypothesis on your own. Gather a group of completely fresh 80s, including the tank and the healer. Enter any heroic besides TOC and ICC heroics. Let me know what happens.
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Even though it wont change your mind on my being a total nub, I did run a bunch of regular dungeons before I jumped into heroics. Once my gear was enough for heroics I started queuing into them. Later in the evening yesterday I was moved up from “easy” heroics like Nexus and UK to somewhat harder HoS and CoS.
Right now I am still on the leveling rotation mindset and my spec leaves a lot to be desired. I mostly want to gear my mage so I can do heroics with my guildies and not just be dragged behind them. It is highly unlikely I will be raiding with my fail mage. I still think like an affliction warlock when I play her and it shows. I get sad when I have to spam blizzard instead of single targeting things. *shrugs* oh well.
I have a guildie who twinks out his toons from the moment he can. He is one of the few people who I have seen do 2k-3k dps upon hitting 80. The guy knows his shit. He also has a lot of free time to focus on his alts and what he needs to know for each of them. I am still learning about my mage so I know I will be doing fail dps for a bit longer.
If we were to have a group as you suggested, it would take 6 hours to clear Old Kingdom. Why 6 hours you ask? Because that is how long it took a group I was in just about a year ago to clear heroic Old Kingdom. Three of the five people in the group had hit 80 that day. It was not something that I enjoyed at the time, but looking back on it, I definately learned something.
I learned to never do that again. ^_^
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*cough* arcane *cough*
Fire is very hard to pull off in 5-mans. The threat is hard to control and stuff just dies too fast.
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Arcane just seems so boring to me.
I like spitting out Dragon’s breath then shooting off an instant mana free flamestrike underneath them
then whacking them in the face with an instant pyroblast caused by my living bomb critting all over them
^_^
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Fire is all about the RNG and praying that your tank can hold threat off you. Especially if you’re doing the Dragon’s Breath shenanigans.
Arcane is all about control. Whereas frost and fire can largely ignore the blue bar, as an arcane mage that blue bar is my damage potential meter. It requires a little more planning than fire and disaster recovery can be tricky, but to me it is infinitely more fun to play, particularly in 5 mans where I got frustrated at the lack of on-demand burst from fire.
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I’m actually quite proud of my threat control on my mage. I do better on her with it than my lock.
I only pull my “dragon breath shenanigans” when I know the tank has everyone covered. I am always sitting back waiting for the tank to get aggro before jumping in.
I also keep my Vuhdo bar up to remove curses :D
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koalabear,
I don’t think you are a total noob. I just think that you, along with a lot of other players, should make more of an effort to keep things in perspective and realize what is happening in your PuG. Your response to my last comment shows a lot. It indicates to me that you understand your performance, why its not at its potential, and that you have identified areas of opportunity to make it better. Most people that I’ve encountered in heroics simply do not take the time to consider that they are being carried.
You don’t want your guildies to drag you through content, but you get defensive if a pug tank implies that you are being dragged through content. Its the same thing, just different people.
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I can see your point on the last comment with the pug tank. The situation there was different to me though. He was expecting us to zerg through the instance when we were trying to just keep up with him. In our particular group, there was no way we could have been carried. If this would have been a year ago we would have been just fine in the instance. Unfortunately this was not a year ago and the mindset is different.
I got upset with the tank because I wasn’t asking to be dragged through and was working on being some sort of an asset to the group. Sadly my dps was the highest and I was sitting at 1600 dps on the boss, mostly because no one would kill the correct mobs and I spent most of my time not hitting the boss. His implication that we were just sitting there rankled, and still does.
Dropping that group was the best thing I did last night.
Also, I am very glad you don’t think I am a noob ^_^
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I am trying to level my warrior through the random dungeon system. I don’t have a lot of time to play him as my rading mage is priority, but I have run a few. I seem to be matched with other players with BoA gear most of the time and things usually go fine.
Before I got my dual prot spec, I was running these instances as arms. I got into a SM Armory run and we proceeded to wipe after a couple pulls. The tanks drops group and we decided to 4 man, with the hunter pulling with his pet and the pet and I tanking. It was a blast and we completed the instance easily. I got a spiffy new ring from the reward and everybody left happy.
The one complaint I have is when I am queuing as a tank, it will put me in an instance where the mobs are 3 or so levels above me and taunt (and other abilities) will miss most times. Super hard to hold aggro while both the mobs and the party members are above me in level.
Other than that, I have had some really good experiences with the new system and run with some really good people.
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[…] Yesterday was all about warm fuzzies, fluffy kittens, prancing unicorns, and cotton candy. […]
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[…] got into it a bit yesterday with Dark/Soth over at Clearcasting and I agree with some of his points but I also think that his mentality is what a lot of people […]
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People got spoiled and expectations moved.
A year ago it was POSSIBLE to pull 2k+ DPS as fresh 80, now it is EXPECTED. A few weeks ago I installed Gearscore. Not to keep possible failplayers away from me, but to be prepared.
As much as I enjoy 4.4-4.9k-gearscore-PUGs, that tackle HoR(h) after several tries, I hate mixed 3.0-5.4k-gearscore-“GoGoGo”-PUGs where a single player causes chaos.
But my expectations moved to: I know most of the others defensive abilities and depending on their score I just WANT them to use them.
5.2k-gearscore-hunter pulling (the wrong mob) off of me: hit “Feign Death” or die! Pullling again? DIE!! Complaining? Vote-kick! Same thing happening to the 3.2k-gearscore mage. Switch target, taunt, keep control, pause, remembering him to use “Iceblock”… But to the end of the instance the mage should have learned something or he will suffer. Same thing for DPS: 5.2k-gearscore-hunter pulling 3.5k DPS ->I don’t spend a word. 3.8K-gearscore-DK holding aggro agains the rest of the 4.5k+ group: Telling him words of respect.
We all vote kick more often, if someone got a high learning resistance, because it’s the only instrument agains douchbaggery we have since we run cross server.
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