This is awesome. A player took screenshots of their character selection screen at every level of their warrior’s journey to 85. It shows how armor and weapons evolved from the simple cloth shirt and pants at level 1 to the elaborate armor at 85.
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I and the couple other people I regularly group with recently moved to a higher population server from a lower population server. The difference has been amazing.
On my old low-pop server, Orgrimmar was virtually empty. You’d see a handful of people milling about, attending to their business. All the cities were like this.
Upon visiting Orgrimmar on my new high-pop server, my first thought was “Are they preparing for a raid?” I did not expect to see dozens and dozens of people in the Valley of Strength, either standing around or running back and forth between the bank, auction house, and any other place between. It bustles.
Another thing I noticed immediately were the random guild invites. I used to get them every once in a while on my old server, but very rarely any more.
On my new server, I’ve gotten at least 10 in less than a week. Hell, a couple of my characters even joined random guilds solely for the perks. But my Auction House mule still gets random invites while wearing his starting rags and scratching his ass in the Auction House.
So far I’m happy with the move. However, our new realm is a PvP realm, and while I’m not too keen on playing on a PvP server, I plan on spending most of my time in the major cities (Sanctuaries) and leveling in the dungeons.
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When running a random dungeon, is it up to the group (the healer – Me – in particular) to keep up with the tank, or should the tank make sure the rest of the group is ready for the next fight?
The reason I ask is that last night, in what turned out to be my last group of the night, the tank ran off ahead of the group to pull while the rest of us looted for quest items and prizes. Now normally, that doesn’t bother me. I usually have enough time to catch up and throw heals at the tank. Last night, however, the tank ran off while I was looting and I just happened to hit a lag spike. The next thing I knew, the tank was down to below 10% health, and was out of range. I ran over as quickly as I could, but it was too late. We wiped.
Now, if something is my fault, I’m willing to take the blame and apologize. However, I’m not sure that was my fault.
If the tank wants to keep the dungeon crawl moving at a swift pace, that’s fine. But s/he also needs to be aware of his group mates – the healer especially. Without the healer, the tank won’t last that long, and without the tank, the rest of the group will wipe quickly.
It wasn’t just this group, either. Three out of four of my groups had a tank that liked to run ahead and pull groups while the rest of us were looting. Normally I wouldn’t mind and I’d make sure to keep up with the tank, leaving it up to the gear rolls to get any loot. But now with the quests available at the dungeon entrances, you’re going to have group members who have to stop and loot corpses.
In the future, I’ll make sure to say something if the tank is getting too far ahead. But honestly, if you just want to rush through as fast as you can, why not just level through questing? Or have a friend run you through to get the loot?
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After a year away from World of Warcraft, and even longer than that from blogging, I’ve decided for some logic-forsaken reason to dive back into it all again.
I was having a good time running Northrend dungeons and the occasional 10-man raid. We had a small little guild, and all was well. Cataclysm came out and I got my Mage and my Warrior to 85.
But then I stopped playing.
I never got into the Cataclysm dungeons; I ran one, but was barely successful. Our small guild had long fallen apart, and I guess life just turned down a different path.
Now I’m back, having missed all of the major content patches and everything else that’s gone on in 2011.
Fire is now the preferred Mage spec for raiding.
My warrior’s action bars look like Egyptian hieroglyphics to me.
Luckily the button-mashing technique worked alright for my Death Knight.
I rolled a Dwarf Paladin with the intent of tanking for the small group of friends I’ll be dungeoning with. I’ve leveled him to 61 rather quickly; he’s a gall-danged steamroller, he is.
Now, however, as I really think about what role I want to play in our dungeon groups, the idea of being the tank doesn’t appeal to me. Nor does being DPS. Healing, however, does. So I’ll be dusting off my Priest and getting back into the swing of things.
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Last Wednesday, December the 23rd, after running the random raid quest, I ran a few random heroics. Toward the end of the night, I was in a PUG doing Halls of Stone. We wiped on the lasers because the tank didn’t see them, apparently. Anyway, when I released and spawned at the graveyard, I got immediately disconnected. I tried logging in again, and the same thing happened. Within seconds of logging in to Ernst, I got disconnected. Out of curiosity, I logged into other characters; they were fine. Only my mage – my main character – is affected.
I contacted Blizzard, and at first they revived my character and moved him to Elwynn Forest. But I still got disconnected upon logging in. Next, Blizzard had me remove the WTF, Interface, and Cache folders, basically returning WoW to a fresh install. That didn’t work.
I tried logging in on my wife’s computer, but that didn’t work either.
So, since the problem exists on different computers, I’m certain it’s something on Blizzard’s end. I’m still waiting for a response from them after I updated my latest in-game ticket. I also sent an email message to tech support.
So far they’ve been courteous in their attempts to remedy the situation, but have been so far unsuccessful.
I missed out on 3 or 4 Triumph emblems last Wednesday, and I’m missing out on more every day that this problem exists. I’m quite ticked.
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Alright, I need advice in regards to my Mage.
First, here’s my Armory: Ernst Armory
Or at WoW-Heroes if it’s more helpful: Ernst @ Wow-Heroes
My problem: Simply put, my damage per second is not as high as it should be.
By the time I stopped running instances with my Death Knight, she was getting close to doing 3,000 dps on boss fights. She was usually first or second on the DPS lists, depending on which boss it was.
Now, my Mage is quite better geared than my DK was, and yet I can’t seem to do more than 2,300 dps on bosses, either in Heroics or in 10man raids.
I used to go as Frost, because my guildies appreciated the Replenishment from my Enduring Winter. Since 3.3, though, they (healers in particular) have been able to get their Mp5 higher, so I’ve been going Arcane.
As Arcane, my rotation usually is thus: Arcane Blast – Arcane Blast – Arcane Blast – Missile Barraged Arcane Missiles
If MB hasn’t procced by the third AB, I’ll cast AB once more. If MB procs that time, I hit AM. If it hasn’t procced by the fourth AB, then I hit Arcane Barrage so I can get back to my main rotation right away.
When I play frost, My rotation is basically to spam Frostbolt. When Brain Freeze procs, I throw a Fireball. If Fingers of Frost procs, and we’re fighting a boss, I hit Deep Freeze; otherwise I toss an Ice Lance.
I usually save my talents like Icy Veins, Arcane Power, Mirror Image, etc. until the bosses so that we can burn them down. I also have a trinket, Mark of the War Prisoner, that I pop as well.
Since reaching the Hit Cap, I was going to focus my gemming on Spell Power and Haste with Reckless Ametrine, but I’m thinking… should I instead focus my gems on Crit and Haste?
The bottom line is that I’m missing about 1,000 dps. I’m a frakkin mage for crying out loud, and it’s not like my gear is horrible. It’d say it’s pretty good for about a month at level 80. Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing something in my rotation(s)?
I really need to figure this out; we want to try Lord Marrowgar again in Icecrown Citadel, and Lady Deathwhisper if we can. Our guild leader says all DPS should be doing at least 3k, but I’m not even close to being able to maintain that. Not even against target dummies.
[/QQ]
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For the first time in my World of Warcraft career, I was able to experience new patch content immediately upon release. Well, I shouldn’t say that; our guild isn’t ready to go raiding Icecrown Citadel, but I ran the Icecrown instance last night for the first time, and others in the guild were in there the first night. It wasn’t until after 3.2 went live that I got my first character to 80, so everything was already in place.
So far, I absolutely love the “Fall of the Lich King” patch.
The first thing I took advantage of was the Dungeon Finder. The night 3.3 went live, most of my guildmates were already doing the Icecrown instance, so I gave the Dungeon Finder a try. The interface was easy to use, and it was only a few moments before I was pulled into a dungeon. That first night the auto-portal didn’t work; which wasn’t terribly surprising. No big deal.
Heroic ToC was the dungeon selected for us, so we all just ran to the tournament grounds on our own servers, entered the coliseum, and there we were. The group performed very well with a Death Knight tank and a tree throwing heals; it probably went more smoothly than some of our all-guild runs. I looted a ring, we congratulated each other when finished, and went our separate ways.
On my second dungeon of the night with guildmates, we discovered the button near the minimap that will port you to and from the dungeon.
I had been hearing of complaints in the Trade channel while in Dalaran about the Dungeon Finder not working, but I or my group have used it a half dozen times or so and haven’t had any difficulties.
Last night while running the Icecrown instance, two of our guildmates had to leave after we finished Pit of Saron. We grabbed another guildmate that had logged on in the meantime, but we had to PUG the fifth. And again, it went very smoothly. It literally took a few seconds between confirming our roles, and having a decently geared Death Knight ready to continue through the Halls of Reflection with us. If it hadn’t been for the Dungeon Finder, we would have had to call off our Icecrown run before the Halls of Reflection.
So yeah, I love the Dungeon Finder. Not only can it keep your group going if a member has to log out, but it will likely be the end of those boring nights when there aren’t enough guildies online to run a heroic. And I’ll be able to run those dungeons I’ve never done (Occulus, Halls of Stone) because no one ever wants to do them.
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I'm a casual World of Warcraft player. I started playing about a month after the game was released in 2004. I've tried each class at least once, but I tend to gravitate toward melee DPS classes. My first main was a Rogue, then a Hunter, followed by a Mage. With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, I've found myself most comfortable with the Death Knight class.
