Another tale from the priesty side…
After being neglected for a few weeks, we finally rounded everyone up again for a day of alt fun.
A couple of our group had managed to sneak up to 68 and turned off XP to allow the rest of us to catch up.
We weren’t 68 yet because we weren’t playing without the rest of the group! *ahem*
Anyway, our party was ranging from 66 to 68.
We’ve got the ret pally, the prot pally, the hunter, the shadow priest, and me – the holy priest.
According to the dungeon list, we are all eligible for a good 6-7 of the same dungeons.
Queue up the random dungeon finder so we can get the helpful satchel goodies.
One or more members of the party do not meet the requirements.
WTF?
Try again.
Again.
Again.
Switch party lead.
Again.
OK…
Queue up for a specific instance… get right in.
Whatever.
Group gets up to 67 and 68.
Try queuing random again.
One or more members of the party do not meet the requirements.
Seriously?
OK, let’s go to the Caverns of Time and open up Escape from Durnholde.
Follow around the Keepers of Time…
Run Escape.
Queue for random dungeon.
Escape from Durnholde.
We were just there… oh well.
Queue for random dungeon.
Escape from Durnholde.
Again?
Queue for random dungeon.
Escape from Durnholde.
What. The. Hell.
Ok, we’ve done it 4 times now.
Fuck Thrall and the time line, you bitches are on your own now.
We seemed to be having a real problem with the ret pally killing everything before the other party members can contribute much.
(Note to self, reminder to start petition to nerf Dark/Soth.)
Hey, we’re all 68!
The over achievers dashed off to turn XP back on and we reviewed the list.
Utgarde Keep.
It’s orange.
Level 68 is the lowest level that the dungeon finder will let in there.
Let’s do it.
Ret pally has a bad feeling.
Prot pally says we can leave after the second wipe.
Zone in and pick up the 2 quests.
The quests are orange too.
Deep breath, and go!
Second pull is… bad.
We rediscover what having an aggro radius the size of a football field is like.
But it wasn’t a wipe!
The spriest managed to run back out the instance and the hunter feigned.
After that, it went pretty well.
Things lived long enough that the spriest and hunter actually got to DO something instead of watch the ret pally ripping faces off of everything.
Although the spriest needs to level his enchanting, he was not high enough level to DE the unwanted drops.
Chop chop!
Had a couple deaths on the Skarvald and Dalronn fight, but still pulled it off.
Healing certainly went from “ho hum” to “oh fuck” real quick.
We get to Ingvar without further incident although I believe I may have invented new expletives along the way.
Get through the first half of Ingvar without a problem.
Except the hunter is out of my LoS during the intermission. You’re on your own, buddy.
Second half starts.
ZOMG he hits like a truck.
Ret pally goes down, think it was the whirling axe.
Tank is getting hit hard… heals are sooooo slow…. want haste!
The heal almost goes off…
Tank is down.
Ingvar is close to death.
I’m trying to keep the hunter and spriest up but the healing aggro was too much.
I’m down.
Spriest loads up the DoTs…
Spriest is down.
Hunter… somehow manages to stay alive…
Ingvar is down!
And the only one left standing is the ONE FUCKING PERSON IN THE ENTIRE PARTY THAT CANNOT RESURRECT ANYONE.
WTB hunter with engineering.
Who's painting faces with blood now, hmm?
As I’m looting Ingvar’s head (good thing he has 5 to go around), it hits me – I just fucking healed a Northrend dungeon! And I didn’t phenomenally fail!
I know it’s just normal UK, but this was a pretty monumental kill for us (or maybe just me?).
When Wrath was released, we were already level 70.
We had our epics, craftables or dungeon drops mostly, a piece off the AH or two, only Dark had any raid drops that I know of, but we were as purple as we could get.
Our first several attempts at normal Utgarde Keep were… pathetic at best.
We must have wiped at least half a dozen times.
This time around…
We went in with a fraction of the gear we had the first time (and 2 levels lower), but what we lacked in ilevel (and level) we made up in experience.
It was challenging, there were moments for me that were downright terrifying, but we rose to the occasion.
Turning in the 2 quests back at Vengeance landing netted us a TON of XP and some really spiffy item upgrades.
We’ll do a few quests for the rewards, and then it’s back to the Northrend dungeons!
clearcasting 
Ari you did a top notch job on the heals. And as said hunter i am droping skinning to take eng now that i am at NR levels on my LW.
/signs petition again
“A couple of our group had managed to sneak up to 68 and turned off XP to allow the rest of us to catch up.
We weren’t 68 yet because we weren’t playing without the rest of the group! *ahem*”
How rude. The obviously need more alts
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Meh, nerf the hunter BoA bow with the OVER 9000! hit rating on it. Its kinda hard dpsing a level 72 boss with 4% hit. =p
You did outdps me, therefore your signature on the petition is nullified.
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Dang hunters and their LOS times…makes me want to smack them.
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Enjoy healing while it is still somewhat of a challenge. :D
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It gets easy?
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When you get geared, healing heroics, outside of the new ICC ones, is really easy. The only challenges I even get anymore are the very undergeared tanks that think they are invincible.
Sometimes if they have been a particularly PITA prick I won’t heal them, but other than that I don’t usually have to do more than pop rejuvs on people.
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Wait, you have an issue healing tanks who are undergeared and/or performing poorly, so you don’t heal them? I thought you were ok with underperforming players, because they were still on the learning curve?
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Thanks for twisting my words :-p
I don’t have an issue with them. I won’t heal jerks though. If the tank is undergeared I might actually have to heal more than a rejuv. Undergeared tanks aren’t usually too bad to deal with.
Do you enjoy picking fights or something Dark?
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Not usually. I am more of a “path of least resistance” guy. Ask Ari. =)
For some reason, this whole thing really irks me, for a whole lot of reasons. I just don’t understand why its ok to be carried. I guess its just a personality clash for me. Nobody carries me. I won’t allow it. My performance is never below average. I don’t accept it. If I am performing below average or barely getting by, I move down to easier content until I am comfortable enough to move up. As a hypothetical, if you need say 15k dps for an encounter split 5 ways, you better believe I’ll pull at least 3750 and won’t accept someone else doing 2500. Everyone should pull their weight. I don’t believe that anyone should be allowed to ride the coattails of anyone else and have the same access to prizes at the end.
Obviously, I am in the minority here, and I’m just going to let it go.
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I understand that, and I agree to an extent. My issue comes in when people are doing perfectly viable dps for the content they are in and they are told they aren’t doing enough and as a result are being carried. 1k-1.5k is perfectly fine for the old heroics. It is what everyone was doing a year ago. Suddenly now that we all have much better gear available and are running instances that we are over geared for, everyone is expected to put out 2k+ or they are being accused of carried no matter what kind of gear they have.
When you get better gear, yes you better be putting out the higher numbers; however, if you are in ilvl 187-200 gear, which is the heroics level of gear, 1k-1.5k dps is what you should be capable of doing at the minimum.
For exampe: if I am on my mage, who is around ilvl 207, and I am putting out at least 1.5k dps minimum (it is actually around 1900 now), staying out of the fire, not pulling aggro and helping the healer/tank, would you still call that being carried?
Right now I am just trying to understand what you feel being carried is.
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I’ll try and give a short answer. You can break 4k in avg ilvl 213s. I’ve done it, and many others have as well. Therefore, even an average player can break 2k in i200s. A great player will break 2k in 187 gear. With how easy it is to get gear, and the fact the you can get Triumph badges prior to level 80, get i200 BoE epics for a few hundred gold (server dependent), there is no reason a fresh 80, today, can’t break 2k. I’ll say 2k today is about 1400dps 12 months ago. DPS is so easy now. Blizzard has dumbed down all the rotations, most classes push 4-5 buttons at most.
Here is my definition of being carried, and in my opinion, I am being lenient: Once your item level averages 200, under 2k dps is being carried.
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Ok, I will still disagree, but thank you for telling me.
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I can agree to disagree. But let me ask you this: If I told you that it was possible for Player X to do 1400 dps at level 68, would you believe me? Then, if I said that from level 68 to level 80, Player X only increased his dps to 1500, would that be acceptable?
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I would believe you. Mostly because I have a guildie that can do that. I also don’t think that their lack of progression is acceptable. If they are doing that already, then there is no reason they haven’t done better.
Those people though tend to play the game where they are doing the max they can for everything. They are constantly in the best gear they can be, with the best enchants/gems available. They tend to buy the best BoEs they can off the AH, or run dungeons until they get a specific piece of gear, even while leveling. I call it twink leveling.
I don’t twink level. Yes I have the heirloom gear, but unless the toon is an enchanter, they don’t usually have their gear enchanted while leveling. I don’t need to outperform everyone to have fun. But then I guess that is why I am not hardcore.
Now to tie your specific situation to what we were discussing earlier – not every level 68 could pull off that 1400. Say that you have a regular Joebob who is leveling and just having fun and not min/maxing while leveling. They are able to pull off 750-900 dps at 68. Then at 80 they manage 1500 in their quest gear. Is that still unacceptable?
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zomg the 2 of you need to get a room or something.
I’ve been perusing my old screen shots of back in the day (that would be last April or so) and looking at the DPS for our early heroic runs. In the screen shots I have, most of us had been 80 for at least 2-3 months and I’m the only one consistently breaking 2k.
Personally, 1-1.5k for a FRESH 80 is perfectly acceptable. Not everyone has had the opportunity to stack up the gear that they need to really shine.
There will be a follow up blog post. I can’t wait to see both your comments then. =P
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woot I have helped you with a blog post!
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“Then at 80 they manage 1500 in their quest gear. Is that still unacceptable?”
Absolutely not. That would be a phenomenal achievement for Joebob. If Joebob asked my advice, I would tell him that running a few level 80 normals is almost guaranteed to upgrade many of his quest pieces. If he can pull 1500 in quest pieces, the blues from level 78-80 normals would put him to 2k in no time.
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/redvines
i dun like popcorn when i watch movies etc.
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I should start charging admission to the comments section.
In the red corner, representing the elitist minority: Dark/Soth!
In the blue corner, fighting for the millions of Joebobs: koalabear21!
Let’s get ready to ruuuuuummmmmmble!
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I am glad I was able to bring entertainment to you all ^_^
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I hit 80 last week on my DK, and was instantly doing 2k and up in 5 mans with three ilvl 200 pieces and a whole bunch of shit gear. If you are a decent player (and being hit capped helps), gear will not be the crutch that it is often used as.
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Holy crap I got one guy on my side. Thanks Darraxus. Love your Real Azeroth Heroes posts btw.
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Pfft I was rocking 2k back in Vanilla. :P
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You or your penis?
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Gratz on your first northrend heal!
I remember my first trip healing that place (new toon rolled up just before Ulduar launched) and it was nervewracking to say the least. Ingvar just wiped the floor with us, then painted his face with our blood. I hate to admit it but one of the party members called in a guildie to help make up for my lack of uber heals.
I was almost on the verge of giving up on this whole healing thing because I’d done so badly and needed to be bailed out by someone’s buddie. The next day I found out about the “feature” were if you’re dual specced your secondary spec (resto for me) would not have it’s action bars auto updated when you got new spell levels. I had healed UK all the way up to Ingvar with the healing spells I had back at level 50 running Sunken Temple. I went from thinking I was a total failure to thinking this healing thing might really be for me.
I’m glad your first trip worked out much better.
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