It's monday.... and I'm bringing you a Tooth & Arrows instead of a These Ancient Eyes post. Why? Well, because there hasn't been a T&A post in awhile, and also because I wasn't sure where to go with the TAE post I'd been writing. So, without further ado, a bit on love for a catbird.
I tried valiantly to get Kalitri, my feral worgen druid, to L60 last night, only to pass out about four bars from finished. However, a situation arose that brought up to me just how far I’ve advanced since I was having so many issues with her back when she was a Night Elf (pre Cata, as I remade her Worgen the day after Cataclysm came out).
I started playing Des because Kalitri’s original form taught me that I didn’t have the focus necessary to play a melee class, or so I thought. Questing through Darkshire, I would find myself with 2 mobs on me and be very suddenly dead. The mobs were even lower level than me. I’d just get so caught up in what was going on, and I’d switch targets, not knowing who I should focus on… and then I’d be a dead little nelf kitty. I essentially ragequit the character in frustration, though I didn’t delete her – she was my first character, no matter how upset I’d become with her. And one day I would figure out druids.
In the meantime, I rolled Des, who would eventually become my first level cap character, and started several others. Then Cataclysm was launched and the worgen were released. I played through the starter zone on a hunter the night it launched, but quickly discovered I had no interest in leveling yet ANOTHER hunter. I was looking at my character screen and my eyes settled on Kalitri. The nelves allied with the Worgen and helped them. What if one of their envoys was bitten?
The story continued in my head until even the worgen’s human form was explained – a nelf, cursed with the Forsaken plague, would turn into an undead human (as we all know, there are no non-human Forsaken). So during the battle, she was cursed. But before the plague could fully pull her into undeath, one of the quick thinking Worgen bit her, hoping the power of the wolf would fight off the plague. It worked – but at the cost of her original species. She was now human/Worgen instead of Night Elf… and even her forms had changed.
No, I didn’t pay for a character change, though I thought about it. But then I realized I’d just be stuck where I was, with a Worgen instead of a nelf. I needed to relearn the class, now in my much more experienced state. So… I clicked the delete button on the original Kalitri, and immediately remade her as a worgen. By the time I’d left Darkshore, I already had a much better handle on playing the class than I had when she was a nelf. I’d even tanked a couple of dungeons as a bear. (Another big deal for me, as I’d never tanked anything before.)
It seemed very quick that Kalitri got to L40 – even with me playing most of the time on Des to get to L85, and playing through all the new Cata zones. But then she just kind of… stuck. I wasn’t having trouble playing her so much as playing her took a lot of focus, and I wasn’t in a place where I could do that. As a Hunter, I can tab off the wow window and do something else at any time. If I look back and something’s attacked me, my pet has usually taken care of it and my only frustration is that I lost out on loot. On any non-pet class, however, you get yourself distracted with, say, writing a paper for school, or responding to a friend’s text, and you click back on to find yourself dead. So… I stopped playing her for a while.
From the moment I’d created the original druid, what I’d looked forward to the most was L60 – the flight form. No mounts to fly, no need! Just leap into the air, become a bird, and fly away. Never mind that it’s one of my favorite real life daydreams – I would actually be able to DO it as a druid. And it was even cooler for Kalitri who, until recently, used no form of transportation other than herself. She used Running Wild as her mount, or simply dashed around in cat form. Also, the ability to cast flight form while moving will make for some awesome saves. Being chased by something through Howling Fjord? No problem! Turn, leap from the cliff, insta-cast Flight Form and you’re in the air! An excellent way to drop agro – which is the one thing the class is lacking, as far as I’m concerned. But I’ve been spoiled by my Hunter’s Feign Death.
So recently, as the only thing I’ve been doing on Des is rep grinds, I started playing Kalitri again with the decision to A) learn to focus better – clicking buttons should not make that much difference in speed from hitting hot keys. And B) to see some of the higher level Cata-changed zones. So began her quests. I started in Desolace, finished that zone, and then moved on to Burning Steppes and then Blasted Lands. I can now reliably take on up to 3 enemies at the same time that are at least 2, if not 3, levels above me, and win. I’ve mastered shifting out of cat form to heal myself, but keeping the DoT of thorns and Rake on the mobs at the same time, so sometimes they actually die while I’m still healing myself. This was put to the test in Hellfire Peninsula last night with dramatic results.
I was sent into a Fel Orc encampment to mark their sentry towers with smoke signals so they could be bombed from above by the Gryphon riders of Honor Hold. This isn’t too hard – I Prowled into the middle of the camp and no one even saw me. I neglected to realize that when I used the item it would take me out of stealth mode, however. And that’s when it got fun. The 3 tower guards came down on me. It was only then that I noticed they were L61. I was L58. THAT was a bit of a level difference. I freaked out, and I don’t even have my panic button anymore of shifting to bear form and tanking them with the extra armor, since I had to split my DPS spec from my tank spec at L50 – the talent trees start to get mutually exclusive at that point – so I was throwing everything I had at them. I pulled Tiger’s Fury, I Ravage!’d, I Raked, I Mangled like there was no tomorrow. I put up Thorns and Nature’s Grasp, shifted to caster and leaped back to heal myself as they were grabbed by the Entangling Roots proc of Nature’s Grasp and therefore were out of range while I healed myself, then I shifted cat and Feral Charged right back into the fight. I almost died several times, but I finally pulled it off, and the 3 mobs lay dead at my paws. I looted them and realized in shock that I was fine – I was better than fine, actually. My last round of healing me had stuck, and I had full health and full energy. I stealthed again and headed for the next tower. But this time I Feral Charged in the moment I was within range.
A repeat of the previous battle occurred, except that it went faster because I’d had time to hit myself with a heal over time and put Thorns on before I initiated. Two more times, I repeated the fight, and by the time I completed the quest, I was impressed. Gone was the druid who didn’t know what she was doing and died to 2 low level undead npcs could easily kill, and here was a seasoned feral warrior able to take down three mobs that were each three levels above her.
Tonight, Kalitri will ding 60 and finally gain her illusive flight form. What I’ve been working towards on her since creating the character originally. Onwards to 60!
Monday, August 29, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Heroic Leap
Trying to fix 85 levels of bad habits when gaming on Destylae lately is my big focus, along with my usual reputation grinds and the new Molten Front dailies (I want that Hippogryph!). I spent all of the game focusing on armor when I should’ve been stacking stats, and now at the end game level, I’m paying for it. Grinding for justice points to purchase gear I should’ve already had the equivalent of through normal leveling – but I picked up whatever gave me more armor, no matter what stat it effected… and recently I was so bad in dungeons I was doing less than 4k DPS.
But you’ve all heard me complain about that before. The point being that I’ve now gotten my iLevel up high enough that I can get into L85 Heroics, though PlayerScore says that the difficulty for me is “light,” I have other things to say. Heroics aren’t called heroics because they’re easy – they’re called heroics because it’s more than just item level or gear – it’s skill and teamwork that gets you through them. And now, having been along on the completion of Stonecore, Vortex Pinnacle, and now The Lost City of the Tol’vir, I have to say – I’m not entirely certain I have the skill level to be running Heroics yet.
The thing is, though – sometimes I’m damn good. It’s performing consistently that I have an issue with. If I eat my agility boost food, and use an agility scroll, I can pull DPS as high or higher than Nyx. But if I screw up, for even a few seconds – if I pull too much agro and have to run to the tank to avoid getting my little Draenai tail handed to me on a plate, or if I do what I did last night and accidentally pull a mob because my hand just happened to hit my “Target-FIRE” macro button while we were talking about the fight (thankfully that didn’t happen in a heroic, and it wasn’t a boss, but my point still stands) – then my DPS drops by more than half and I wind up doing so low that I spent the rest of the dungeon trying desperately to catch up to Nyx in overall DPS. Then I have the problem that my eyes are so much on the DPS meters that I forget the mechanics of the fights.
Now, last night, I actually don’t think it was specifically me that screwed up at any given time other than the ones I already mentioned – agro pulling and the one shot botch I somehow managed to do – but it still stands that… Well… The Lost City of the Tol’vir, on regular, takes a good group about 20 minutes to burn through. On Heroic, the average time to rip through a dungeon is doubled or tripled, because you can’t skip individual mobs in most places and so spend longer killing the trash on the way to the bosses. But last night – we were in Lost City for nearly 3 hours.
Given the normal ratio, it shouldn’t have taken us more than an hour at most to complete that dungeon – and that’s on the long side. We had a good group, all five of us knew what we were doing… and yet it still took 3 hours and a lot of character-shuffling on the part of our 3rd DPS as we tried to find a good fit for us. His Warrior pulled too much agro off the tank, his healing Pally was instance locked and couldn’t come help us, he wasn’t practiced healing heroics on his Priest… eventually he wound up pulling in a pinch hitter for us on the last boss, and he sat the fight out while she healed. She and I were the only two to die in that final battle, and we finally got our pattern down. But it doesn’t change the fact that it took us 3 hours to get through what should’ve been a 1 hour dungeon, and part of me wonders if it’s my skill level that’s contributing to the problem. I wasn’t really on my game last night, I admit. Not like other nights.
Last weekend, we spent the day doing random regulars. And I was on the BALL that day. My DPS was high, my focus was good, every time we ran through Halls of Origination, I easily pulled off the “jump-pull lever-run from snakes-reenter fight” sequence on the first boss – something I usually get confused by and wind up running around down in the snake pit looking for the stairs – every single time without fail. I CC’d when my Frost Trap was needed, and I didn’t miss. I kept control over Hatari (who has now been joined by Nzuri, a white Hyena who I’ll probably talk about in a later blog), and I made sure I knew where he was at all times. I timed my shots and my Kill Commands perfectly. I was a damn good Hunter that day, and my low agility didn’t even seem to matter.
But last night, I was out of it. And it translated into the real world, even, when I managed to burn the pad of my right thumb badly when picking up a hot dish, after we’d finally finished the Heroic. I was struggling to stay where I should be on the DPS charts, I ran out of agility scrolls and had to fight that much harder – I lost nearly 400 DPS when I ran out of scrolls. And now I need to make more agility food, which means I have to go fishing in Uldum along the coast for Fathom Eels. I haven’t gotten around to that, yet.
To sum up, while I’ve taken the “Heroic Leap” (an actual Warrior ability, but I thought it was an appropriate title anyway), I worry that I may have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. But only continuing to do it will I learn. Especially since, when I cap my engineering skill, I’m going to want those Chaos Orbs so I can make myself a better gun.
So, with more in front of me, I’m just going to keep trying. In the wise words of the Eleventh Doctor – GERONIMO!
But you’ve all heard me complain about that before. The point being that I’ve now gotten my iLevel up high enough that I can get into L85 Heroics, though PlayerScore says that the difficulty for me is “light,” I have other things to say. Heroics aren’t called heroics because they’re easy – they’re called heroics because it’s more than just item level or gear – it’s skill and teamwork that gets you through them. And now, having been along on the completion of Stonecore, Vortex Pinnacle, and now The Lost City of the Tol’vir, I have to say – I’m not entirely certain I have the skill level to be running Heroics yet.
The thing is, though – sometimes I’m damn good. It’s performing consistently that I have an issue with. If I eat my agility boost food, and use an agility scroll, I can pull DPS as high or higher than Nyx. But if I screw up, for even a few seconds – if I pull too much agro and have to run to the tank to avoid getting my little Draenai tail handed to me on a plate, or if I do what I did last night and accidentally pull a mob because my hand just happened to hit my “Target-FIRE” macro button while we were talking about the fight (thankfully that didn’t happen in a heroic, and it wasn’t a boss, but my point still stands) – then my DPS drops by more than half and I wind up doing so low that I spent the rest of the dungeon trying desperately to catch up to Nyx in overall DPS. Then I have the problem that my eyes are so much on the DPS meters that I forget the mechanics of the fights.
Now, last night, I actually don’t think it was specifically me that screwed up at any given time other than the ones I already mentioned – agro pulling and the one shot botch I somehow managed to do – but it still stands that… Well… The Lost City of the Tol’vir, on regular, takes a good group about 20 minutes to burn through. On Heroic, the average time to rip through a dungeon is doubled or tripled, because you can’t skip individual mobs in most places and so spend longer killing the trash on the way to the bosses. But last night – we were in Lost City for nearly 3 hours.
Given the normal ratio, it shouldn’t have taken us more than an hour at most to complete that dungeon – and that’s on the long side. We had a good group, all five of us knew what we were doing… and yet it still took 3 hours and a lot of character-shuffling on the part of our 3rd DPS as we tried to find a good fit for us. His Warrior pulled too much agro off the tank, his healing Pally was instance locked and couldn’t come help us, he wasn’t practiced healing heroics on his Priest… eventually he wound up pulling in a pinch hitter for us on the last boss, and he sat the fight out while she healed. She and I were the only two to die in that final battle, and we finally got our pattern down. But it doesn’t change the fact that it took us 3 hours to get through what should’ve been a 1 hour dungeon, and part of me wonders if it’s my skill level that’s contributing to the problem. I wasn’t really on my game last night, I admit. Not like other nights.
Last weekend, we spent the day doing random regulars. And I was on the BALL that day. My DPS was high, my focus was good, every time we ran through Halls of Origination, I easily pulled off the “jump-pull lever-run from snakes-reenter fight” sequence on the first boss – something I usually get confused by and wind up running around down in the snake pit looking for the stairs – every single time without fail. I CC’d when my Frost Trap was needed, and I didn’t miss. I kept control over Hatari (who has now been joined by Nzuri, a white Hyena who I’ll probably talk about in a later blog), and I made sure I knew where he was at all times. I timed my shots and my Kill Commands perfectly. I was a damn good Hunter that day, and my low agility didn’t even seem to matter.
But last night, I was out of it. And it translated into the real world, even, when I managed to burn the pad of my right thumb badly when picking up a hot dish, after we’d finally finished the Heroic. I was struggling to stay where I should be on the DPS charts, I ran out of agility scrolls and had to fight that much harder – I lost nearly 400 DPS when I ran out of scrolls. And now I need to make more agility food, which means I have to go fishing in Uldum along the coast for Fathom Eels. I haven’t gotten around to that, yet.
To sum up, while I’ve taken the “Heroic Leap” (an actual Warrior ability, but I thought it was an appropriate title anyway), I worry that I may have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. But only continuing to do it will I learn. Especially since, when I cap my engineering skill, I’m going to want those Chaos Orbs so I can make myself a better gun.
So, with more in front of me, I’m just going to keep trying. In the wise words of the Eleventh Doctor – GERONIMO!
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