A Hunter's Story

So I generally don’t raid 25 mans a whole lot. From having done it many times before, I’ve discovered a few things. First, I don’t want to organize one – not really worth being the one who has to deal with the idiots, the impatients, etc. Yes, the loot is better, but spread across more people, so taking probability of receiving gear into account, generally not really worth it. And lastly, and most important, they’re a LOT easier than 10 mans. However, from time to time I do run them because they can be fun.

Dispute me if you want, but as someone who does 10 mans regularly with skilled players, and who does 25 mans periodically… 25 mans are easy in comparison. Especially when you can PuG a successful 25 man without much trouble and yet coordinated 10 mans are tough to get through. Even when the average gear level is about the same. How to explain my position and how I come at this viewpoint… Hmm… One of the bars near us, we had a bartender who played WoW and did 25 man raids while bartending. Why? Because he could get up during the raid (during a boss fight or trash fights) and give us beer, and the group would still succeed no problem. Aka, his groups could pull the weight without trouble when a member or two were NOT EVEN THERE. So there’s a reason – in 25 mans you can have a player or two not there (run as 22 to 24 without trouble) while in 10 mans if you lose 1 player (9 man) you’re pretty seriously gimped. It’s a scale thing, but if you lose 10% of the players in 25′s, it’s not as detrimental as in 10′s, from my exp.

Another reason is that a few good people can carry the rest. In a 10, if you have a good tank and good healers… You still need good dps to get through the fights, or else they take forever and even good healers run out of mana on boss fights, even if the tanks are doing perfect jobs of keeping all the mobs on them. But in a 25 man? If you have a good tank, good healer or two, and decent dps or two? They can carry the group real well. Even for the bosses that require situational awareness – let the idiots die, then carry on. The fight’ll take a little longer, but it’ll still go down, lol.

I say this from experience, but you are free to disagree. Especially if you’re uber geared and a 1337 player who takes no crap from someone who doesn’t do 25 mans every day… But if you sit and think about it for a minute? You might agree. Not that this is anything new, considering I felt the same thing back in BC too.

But anyway, I digress. Last night was actually my first GDKP run, so I was curious how it worked. So I’ll share, in case anyone else is wondering. In our group, the Loot Master had an addon that made it easier. It was, quite simply, an auction. LM would post the item in chat with a minimum bid and with a 5 sec countdown. People would /raid a number (3600, for example) and LM would call it the high bid and then countdown. Whoever posted the highest when the countdown hit 0 won. LM would then do the next item. If you won, you went to LM and traded them the amount. When all items were done, the addon did the math to add it up & divide by # of players, then ask everyone to trade LM for their cut.

So the cool thing is that I actually won a drop. Deathbringer Saurfang dropped 3 pieces worth rolling on (worth rolling on for anyone in the raid I mean, not just Hunters). One went for 10,000g. Another for 6k. And the Protector’s Mark of Sanctification? 2,750. Add in that the split shares were 750g a piece, and I only dropped 2k on my mark. Pretty darn awesome! Half the raid was amazed/commenting/complaining that that’s the cheapest they’ve seen a mark go for, lol. Guess I was just lucky we had no warriors or shaman, and just like 4 hunters who haven’t yet figured out how to play the AH. Well, that and that none of them went over 3k which I think was going to be my limit, lol.

So now comes my only problem… I need more frost badges so I can upgrade a piece of gear. I mean, I could upgrade a piece now since I have enough badges, but the bad part is it wouldn’t be a piece I want to upgrade. My shoulders are 251 off an ICC-10 drop (Gunship), for example. So I really want to upgrade a 232 like my pants, except there’s another upgrade or two out there for them I could get instead. But I think what I’ll actually go for, is my chest. I already broke my 4 piece set bonus because I deemed the gear better than the bonus (or at least roughly equivalent, knowing I’d upgrade at some point). So this would get me on the road towards a second 2 piece bonus. Plus the new chest will be teh awesome! LOL. I just need more badges since it’ll take 95 to get the one to upgrade…

But anyway, it really did just reinforce my belief, again, that 25 man’s are easier. Especially when a 25 man pug can down Saurfang in 1 shot easily when our coordinated 10 man struggled to take him down. I know, I /rant. I just occasionally (well, Lady X would probably say “often” instead of “occasionally” hehe) get tired of people who are loud mouthed about “I run 25′s so I’m better than you” and then they start quoting their DPS or some other number. And they always forget about how you do more dps in a 25 man because of the buffs and all. Giving your Heroic DPS numbers would be a better baseline, but people don’t want to give the lower number, lol. Of cource, Heroic Dungeon fights are different from Raid fights, so I guess it’s a no-win situation. Ok, I know I know… /rantdone, lol.

So thx to Z for asking if I wanted to join in on the 25 man ICC run! It was fun, easy, quick, and I got a drop!

Ho hum, the inevitable TUE Patch Day.  I certainly don’t mind the downtime, since I’m at work all day, lol.  The changes though, are interesting.  Apparently the ghost waves at the beginning of HoR are being adjusted so we no longer have 2 mages or 2 mercs, among some other minor adjustments.  Why interesting?  Because it was doable beforehand.  Tough, but doable. I’ve done it on my DPS, Tank, and Healer in fact.  But I think the main reason behind it is that too many people were leaving party as soon as they popped in HoR.  Bliz seems to want to make it so the majority of people can see the majority of the content.  Makes sense.  Though I don’t mind that some heroics are harder than others.  I just wish that the LFG tool worked a little better in respect to gear and ability.  I know, they can’t really code ability in, but it just seems that some people wind up in places they shouldn’t.  Like the tank we wound up with in HoR with who still had greens on him.  Not a problem if we’re doing Nexus or something, since I enjoy helping others gear up, but HoR?  Yeah, kinda wish there was a way the LFG would not put him in it – he’s just not ready.  However, it’s only really one or two instances, so it’s not a big problem.

So the “or two” means there’s another for me to discuss – Occ.  Apparently this one is the real problem, that no one wants to play.  They’ve already nerfed it by adjusting drake health and such, but it is so shunned that they’re upping the loot.  I don’t much care about the badges or gems, but the Amber Drake is enough to make me PuG EoE.  Why?  Occ you can still get through, even if half the group doesn’t know how to do it.  EoE seems to require that most know what they’re doing.  Not to mention one is a group of 5 and the other 10 (or 25).  I only wish that I could do Occ with guildies and we try specifically for the mount.  That would make it a lot more inviting to me.  Otherwise, it’s the random LFG which means that we only have a small chance of being put there.  Not really a problem doing the other dungeons – I’d just rather do the others on my alts for the badges, and Occ for the mount on my main!  But then, I don’t mind doing Occ, so I’m really not the one Bliz is targeting with this marketing effort for Occ, lol.

Ho hum, vacation over. Always reminds you how much fun not going to work is. Guess that means I should schedule the rest of my vacation for this year. I’ll tell you though, WoW has been pretty crazy. Fun, was finally the opportunity to get into ICC for some rep runs. Even got high enough that now I can make my own Awesome Arrows. New Gear was cool too, from ICC.

Also got the PuG achievement, and of course the fun new pet. We still think that there should be an achievement for 100 pets, which would give you your 101st pet – a dalmation… I’m not quite there, only like 2 more to go, but my wife is. So from all the PuG’s, I’ve realized/learned a few things. I guess a reminder is that I really don’t care for PuGing. I like it when you meet nice people, but more often than not, it’s a bunch of jerks. Like the tank who was already pulling trash before the healer had even zoned into the instance, let alone changed specs, buffed, or done anything else necessary to start. Or the ones who try to just chain pull the entire place without a pause or a break. Also – how hard is it to say “hello” before getting started? Or make a comment or two along the way, just to keep it fun? PuGing has really become a chore, rather than fun. It seems that with the ease of picking up gear far above heroics, that the point of a heroic now is to see how fast you can get the badges. Not to go in and have fun, not to use any mechanics other than straight AoE DPS, and so on. And if the healer makes a mistake (or if the tank is stupid and blames it on the healer, or vice versa), or if DPS makes a mistake, etc – what is the response? “You’re an idiot, I have an XYZ alt (or my boyfriend has one) and it’s so easy.” Seriously dude – just chill! Remember, Xanther says play nice! It’s ok if one or two chars die. It’s ok if everyone wipes once or twice. It’s only your character that dies – not you! And don’t forget, many people are chaining heroics to get gear. So yelling at someone to “get better gear before you run heroics” when they’re running heroics to get better gear doesn’t make you cool – it makes you an elitist jerk. Lighten up and help them. Oy!

So all that aside, ICC was fun. Why? A practical use for an ability mostly just used when bored – Eyes of the Beast. It’s fun to run around there as your pet, looking for traps. It also makes hunters feel useful for something other than simply MD, since everything is AoE’d and not CC’d anymore. Though we have been using it a little on the 2 5-pulls right after Ick. Still hate those guys tho, lol. But anyway, I should probably get back to work, since I’m at work…

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!