A Hunter's Story

I know, not really posting much right now… It’s the holidays so I haven’t been on WoW much. That, and my wife had surgery last week. And we got the Lego Star Wars & Indiana Jones games for the Wii They are a lot of fun! Of course, that also means less time for WoW, lol. Got the Merrymaker achiev on both of our 2 main alts. Well, we still have to get the hat for one of hers, but we have another day or two to get around to it… But anyway – Happy New Year! Party hard and enjoy it, it only comes once a year!

Merry Christmas! Ok, would’ve added a graphic or someother, but was busy, lol. G’night, hope you got great presents!

Last night was not nearly as crazy as the night before. We did have a real winner though! Did a pug since all we needed was a tank (I was healing on my druid). It was a warrior with over 40k health, so I figured we should be pretty set. Except the first thing that made me wonder, was when I asked if we were going to tank it around the corner, and he said no, to stay right in the entrance area – he has own methods. So I say ok, thinking it was a bad idea. But whatever, if that’s how he likes to tank it, I’m happy to try it. So we start pulling the trash and he seems to be doing fine with pulling them off of everyone, so I begin to think that maybe he does have a good method. Until they all come after me and within 2 hits I am dead. Use soulstone, pop back up and continue healing. Happens again, we wipe, the instant he’s dead he leaves party.

He actually left so quick, I have to wonder – is there an auto-release addon if your party doesn’t meet your expectations? I mean, he didn’t say anything, he just left as if him dieing was an auto-release. Wth? Jerk. I mean, I know I’m not the best of healers, but I’d like to think I’m decent. And as long as the mobs aren’t hitting me, I’d like to think I’m at least pretty good.

So then we had a DK PuG tank come in, first question (upon seeing the corpses on the ground) was “how bad is it?” Don’t remember the exact wording, but it was just her getting a feel for how many tries, where we were, etc. In all she turned out fine – we only wiped about twice the whole dungeon, but we did complete it. Not to mention, I can still say that I have never successfully completed that front room unless we were tanking in one of the side alcoves. Not that I’m not open to trying it in the entrance area – just that we’ve successfully done it many times in the side alcoves. It also makes me a little smug toward the first pug tank… We didn’t get the timed achievement, but we did take down the final wall in under the required 6 minutes. Oh well. Got some new gear for pretty much everyone, and got through HoR. Yay!

Ok, so last night was rather interesting and pretty funny. I and 2-3 guildies (depending on who was available at what time) were running randoms and having a pretty good time. The 1-2 pugs we picked up were always interesting. We seemed to get all the Dumb Knights though.

Yes, notice the positive points this time? Huntards get negative achievement points because they tarnish the name Hunter. But if they are no longer a Huntard, then this helps the name of Hunter! Sorry DK’s, there’s a few good ones out there like Kal, but the rest must be former Huntards, lol.

Anyway… Last night. Oh the fun. This achieve goes to all of them. I forget the order, but we got them time after time so they blur together. So we’ll call this one the first one. CoS. I’m tankin (tanked all of them w’ my paladin, got some upgrades too!). Everyone has the drake, but I figure we can go for timed run anyway just for the extra badge, and to make it go fast. So we’re waiting for the first wave spawn, and the DK starts running off in one random direction. Confusing, but ok… So of course the wave comes and he went the wrong way (50-50 shot and he got it wrong). So by the time he catches up to us, pretty much all but one mob is left. We run to the next group and he sticks around killing some undead before catching up. After the first boss kill and he goes off in a random direction again, I point out that it works better if we stick together as a group. That way the tank doesn’t kick his butt in DPS (kinda tired of me doing 1800 dps and him at ~700 by now, since his gear was quite better than that, and he wasn’t even with us for most of the fighting – he was just running around doing his own thing. I know there’s a prob w/ cross-realm dps meters, but that really wasn’t the problem – trust me). So he says “I really don’t care, jackass”.

Obviously.

So one of the guildies just asks “who’se the jackass?” and we just had some fun laughing with each other at him in vent (I know, you had to be there. didn’t realize it was going to be a fun filled DK night otherwise I would’ve made notes for this post, lol). But anyway, even with his pathetic DPS and attacking targets on his own, we did get the extra boss & badge, with about a minute to spare. Took down the final boss, and right after the loot pops up, he didn’t even bother to need or greed – just left, so we’d have to wait for the auto-pass timer. Jackass. How about a little sense of teamwork? Maybe a little gratitude for pulling you through the entire dungeon while you did nothing? Oh well, we were in a good mood and just made more fun of him for being so rude and noobish.

DK #2. Gundrak. So I know I’m not a DK (well, I have 2 of them, but one is lvl 60 and the other like 63 or something). But I do know how to DPS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but unless you’re doing a specific AoE pull, and you’re doing something to help aggro things onto the tank… you should only use AoE or massive dps cooldowns during the fight. Like Army of the Dead. Why the hell would you cast that not only before a boss fight, but before everyone has confirmed they’re even ready?! I mean, first boss fight, Slad’ran, he pulls them out and I figure whatever – he thought we were ready or he accidentally hit it too soon – no biggie. But next boss? So by the time we got to Moorabi we were getting annoyed and a guildie pointed out that you cast that after the fight has begun. He kinda blew it off, and we figured he hadn’t learned anything from the encounter. We were going to make fun of him for forgetting the extra boss, Eck, and just jumping in the water to finish up, but one of the guildies was absentmindedly following him, so we made fun of him in vent too, lol. Of course, he made fun of himself as well, so it was all good. Took down eck, got up to Gal’darah, and I sat down to drink. He pulls out AotD. I continue to get mana back. He start’s saying “Go, let’s go”. I start wondering how long AotD lasts, and if I should let it run out before pulling. Finally I figure I should just go anyway, since everyone was ready. On my way in, all of his army dies because of the time between cast and pull. I wasn’t paying too much attention to chat (trying to tank the boss…), but it was along the lines of guildies saying “see, that’s why you wait until the boss has been pulled”, and him yelling at them saying they were stupid. Guildie healer said well, I’m not going to heal him if he’s going to be like that. So silly me for… accidentally… yeah, that’s it… keeping the boss in one place when he whirlwinded (whirlwinded… that a word?). This wise and all-knowing DK stayed right on him, and obviously died. Lol. Healer even told him he wasn’t going to heal him. So the fight was fine, and we took the boss down easy. The guildie who can’t rez anyone (class couldn’t) asked in vent if we were going to rez him or not. So I /emote contemplates rezzing DumbKnight. But rather than be a total jerk and not, I did. Instant he was alive, he leaves party. Lol. Guess he was a sore loser. I mean, we weren’t being completely nice, so you can’t blame him too much, but only after trying to help teach him to be a better DPS. Sore loser.

So I break in the stream of DK’s (yes, there’s another…) to go to another pug we had last night, a non-DK. This is just to explain the type of people we normally are, when we’re not dealing with jerks. Aka, when we’re dealing with Newbs, and not NoObs.

So we’re in Pit of Saron (or Pit of Saruman, as I prefer). Running it with a Newb mage. He was doing fine, up until the point he accidentally pulled one of the patrolling dragons and wiped the group. We’ve all done it though, so no prob. Release and run in. Except he’s taking forever. So we took out the dragon, while waiting, and so we could find his body since he had released and we were looking around. Found his body, rezzed him, and kept moving, figuring he got lost. He said as much. Thank you for letting us know! That meant we knew he needed a little help. So when we wiped on Forgemaster Garfrost, we helped direct him into the dungeon – I stayed outside, so it would help by following the dot on the map/minimap, and we talked him through it. Took some extra time, but he got in ok. Took down the forgemaster, then Ick. Got through the first stupid-annoying-5 pull fine. Not took quick on sheeping, but it worked. Wiped on the 2nd group. Damn, I hate those guys. Bad pull, bad positioning, sheep didn’t work, agro went funky… I hate those guys. Anyway, we figure the newb had an idea where he was going, so we headed in. Since it was easy enough, and we got in faster than him, we just rezzed him that time. However, after wiping on the gauntlet, he couldn’t find it when heading back in. So we patiently waited, and one of our guildies talked him through it. Took a while, but you have to learn sometime. We figure better when with a group like ours, than a group made up of DK’s like the other ones I’ve been mentioning here… Could’ve booted him from the group, or left him, but that doesn’t help anyone. Instead, he made it back in just fine (with the explanation), so we continued. Even managed to get an achiev too! Which is proof you don’t have to do the gauntlet on one shot, btw, but I think you still can’t be hit by the ice at all during any of your tries. So yes, it took us extra time to help teach him how to get back in, but now he has learned something. Good luck to him, and I hope he does well.

Commercial break over, back to the DumbKnights. Azjol’Nerub. Think we finally have an ok one. He’s not doing anything crazy stupid, helping the group with his dps and such. And then a guildie just had to say it… We start in on some set of mobs (don’t remember if it was boss or other), and I pick up agro. Then he drops his AotD. Our guildie proceeds to say “finally, a good DK”. And yes, like 5-10 seconds later, he wound up pulling agro on something (or many somethings) and getting himself killed. Oy – finally find a DK who puts down AotD, and then he has no concept of threat management. On top of that, he liked to stand in Anub’Arak’s Pound. Why can’t we get nice pugs? However, he wasn’t too bad, so it was all good. We loot Anub’Arak. He waits for everyone to hit greed on the orb, then hit’s need, wins it, and leaves party.

Jackass.

I mean, I could care less about the orb. I have 2 stacks of them in the bank, and if I really needed another one, I have plenty of friends who would give me a few. It’s the courtesy that kills me. People seem to think that because it’s a cross-realm pug it means you can be a jerk and get away with it. What happened to “play nice”? Why be a ninja, especially over something so easy to obtain? Why be a jerk when people are trying to help you dps better? Why ignore teamwork and run in random directions? Why not be nice and spend the extra 10 minutes and teach the poor guy where the entrance to the dungeon is!

Anyway, in relation to DK’s, I am happy to run with true DeathKnights such as Kal and the few like him. I feel his pain with DumbKnights which were undoubtedly Huntards at one point. From a Hunter standpoint though, thank you Bliz for making DK’s – got all the Huntards to pick a new class! Lol.

And I know that this little blog doesn’t have a big reader base, but I hope others post something similar, and that maybe we can have some effect on the PuG world. So after this wall ‘o text, I shall coin the phrase, and please feel free to repeat: “Xanther says play nice!”

WoOt! First time we’ve seen it drop in our various runs… A battered piece of junk. So surprised when I saw it (as I think we all were). Then we rolled, and I actually won it! With 4 guildies and 1 pug, I was pretty convinced the pug was going to win it, lol. Anyway, I’m only a little ways into the quest chain (didn’t have time to do it all last night) and I have to say it’s pretty cool. Though doing laundry was an interesting component. But the long (did I mention it takes a while?) quest chain will end in receiving a very cool weapon.

So this will be me soon! Isn’t it pretty? Yeah, pretty sharp!!! Haha!

Today, there was no temperature outside. Well, I mean that it was 0 degrees. Like none. Brr!!! Not surprising after the wind yesterday. Today, of course, was our office’s winter party. We were supposed to come in holiday attire (yay, no uniform!), so I put on a Hawaiian shirt and put some candy cane’s in the breast pocket. Annnnnnnnd 1 person got it without me explaining. Yes, Christmas in July. D’uh! Ok, I can even go with the reverse – 4th of July in December. I guess my sense of humor isn’t quite in line with everyone else’s, lol. I wonder what that means about this blog in general…