I've come a long way since I was afraid of dungeons in WoW. Admittedly I haven't come far enough that the concept of going into a dungeon that I've never been in before alone isn't something that scares me, but I've still come a long way.
With the recent WoW patch, the "Endgame" portion of Cataclysm was introduced. The last three major dungeons that set up the final raid in which Deathwing meets his end and the threat he presents to Azeroth is averted. This patch also added something completely new to the game - the Looking For Raid feature. It works much like the random dungeon finder, but on a larger scale, building a group of two tanks, five healers, and seventeen DPS to create a 25 man Raid Group, and then you go through a simplifed version of the Dragon Soul raid - the Deathwing fight.
Since it came out, my brother's been running it on his awesome Mage, Skyfox. He knew the fights, knew what we needed to do - it was just a matter of the other three of us getting proper gear from the new Heroic dungeons so we would have access.
Within the last week, Nyx, Lona, and I have all gotten enough Heroic gear that the Raid Finder would let us in. And so began my first raid.
The Dragon Soul raid is broken up into two seperate pieces - the seige of Wyrmrest Temple, and then the Fall of Deathwing. We did them in order, doing Wyrmrest first, taking down a bunch of mini-bosses, flying on drake-back between them. It was quite epic, and within the first few moments I realized I needed to down-grade my graphics settings. Everything was freezing and the lag was throwing my timing off. My computer was built to handle normal WoW at Ultra settings, but put in the high-particle density situation of a 25 man raid, the computer said "no". I put the settings down to their lowest level, and then everything was fine. In the first half of the Raid, I didn't even die.
In the second half, thanks to a miscommunication from a Raid Leader ("Hunters - taunt the drakes down!" ...but...we don't have a taunt... He was talking about using Distracting Shot to pull the flying drakes down to the tanks. But he wasn't clear, and Kata hadn't even experienced that before. The raid wiped, and people were angry - annoying because Nyx and I were two of the four hunters people were yelling at. But obviously none of us had known what to do, so we didn't feel SO stupid), we had some issues at the beginning. But after that? It was beautiful.
We parachuted onto Deathwing's back, working tirelessly to remove some of his Elementium and Titanium armor so that Thrall could take aim with the Dragon Soul and take him down. Deathwing fell into the Malestrom. Just when we thought he was defeated, he reared up - even falling apart, dying, he was still trying to destroy the world. The final phase of the raid involved forcing him to unhook from the rocks around the Maelstrom so that he could be destroyed for good. The only bit of him that made it through was a hunk of his jaw.
Now, I have a special relationship with Deathwing, of sorts. And even as we entered the raid, I made sure to pay him as much respect as possible. I /bow-ed to him, and /saluted him a few times through the course of the fight. My respect seems to have paid off, as I won the roll on my Best-In-Slot weapon that dropped from him after the fight. It made me very happy, and really the raid wasn't very much worse than a dungeon - not even a heroic. Though I admit I'm not finding Heroics nearly as frightening as I used to. Now they're a way to gain valor and level the Guild.
The awesomeness continued however, as the next day the five of us (Kata, Nyx, Lona, me, and our friend Colten) decided to see if we could 5-man Obsidian Sanctum to get the black drake mount to drop. Turns out we not only could do it, but we did it incredibly easily - we had that dragon down before his first lava wave came all the way up. We took him out in about 20 seconds, which has me wondering if we can pull off the version that's designed for 25 man, since all that's different is that his health is higher - two and a half times higher, which means we can probably take him out in about a minute. I say we try it. :P
Last weekend (so much gaming news to catch up on!) I leveled my Druid the last five levels to hit 80 and enter Cataclysm content. I prioratized her over my DK only because I've leveled her from level 1, and it seemed cheating to have my 2nd 85 be a class that starts at L55. Today (my birthday) I get to game during the day, and I plan on working her up higher - maybe even hitting 85 today. Or at least in the next couple of weeks.
Simultaniously I finished the next-to-last World Holiday that I needed for the Long Strange Trip meta achievement, and my purple proto-drake. Love Is In The Air started, and I only had six more achievements to complete in order to get my drake. As of today, that's down to 1. And I have everything I need for it. It's just a matter of actually DOING it, which I'm going to do when everyone is available to come with me (so they won't have to worry about doing this on their own when they decide to go for the holiday achievements, and so they'll be with me when my two years of work comes down), which will probably be tomorrow evening. In the mean time, I have plenty of other things to work on in-game. I'm actively "Tol-ling the Barad," as my brother says, once again working toward the two mounts that I can get that way. I'm also finally working with the Oracles in Sholazar Basin to get the Green Proto Drake (unless I get lucky with my first few Bear Tank Call To Arms rewards, that is), and spending a bit of each day farming Lovely Charms so I can do the Love Is In The Air dailies and save up to buy the Love Bird mount...AND at the SAME TIME, I'm gathering Darkmoon Faire tickets to save up for those mounts and pets.
So yeah, gaming gives me lots to do. :P And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what I do for FUN. :P You can only imagine what my work is like.
So, happy birthday to me today. I'm 29 years old. One year to 30. :D I'm excited, and I'm sure interesting things will happen over the course of the next couple of days. :D
I already got a wonderful birthday present from my mom and dad - they got me a new bike with all the accessories! Now I can exercise in a way that won't hurt me, even when I'm not at school. :D It's wonderful and I love it. Thanks mom and dad!
There'll probably be another birthday summary post at the end of the week, but considering that I started writing this blog last Friday, I think I've stalled enough. In other blog news, still working on the new series in my spare time, and I hope to post it this summer. :)
Showing posts with label WoW: classes - Hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WoW: classes - Hunter. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
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!
Friday, July 15, 2011
Oh, THAT'S Why...
So Nyx and I did some comparison today after I once again had crappy DPS in a dungeon, and we finally, FINALLY figured out what is wrong with me- my global cooldown is MUCH longer than hers. If she called out the rotation and I followed, I would run out of focus, trying to keep up with her, despite the fact that my haste was more than hers. It makes me wonder how slow I'd be if my haste was as low as hers.
But the ultimate culprit? My agility sucks. And I mean horribly. It was 2k below Nyx's. No WONDER I couldn't get off the DPS she could. Working my rotation on a single target, I was doing really well... but in the dungeon there're these long moments when I'm just not firing because I'm out of focus or everything's on cool down. I could do burst damage and cap out high, but then my DPS would crash, and for a lot longer, it would be low while I waited for my cool downs to reset.
So I've started gemming and enchanting my gear for agility - we'll see how I do in a dungeon in another couple of days. I also made a note of gear I want to buy when I finish getting Exalted with the Cata factions.
So! Perhaps it isn't a skill issue at all - perhaps I do NOT suddenly suck at being a Hunter... I can't wait to see the DPS I'll do in BM as well once I get my agility up where it should be.
Endgame? Please. I'm just getting started. :D
But the ultimate culprit? My agility sucks. And I mean horribly. It was 2k below Nyx's. No WONDER I couldn't get off the DPS she could. Working my rotation on a single target, I was doing really well... but in the dungeon there're these long moments when I'm just not firing because I'm out of focus or everything's on cool down. I could do burst damage and cap out high, but then my DPS would crash, and for a lot longer, it would be low while I waited for my cool downs to reset.
So I've started gemming and enchanting my gear for agility - we'll see how I do in a dungeon in another couple of days. I also made a note of gear I want to buy when I finish getting Exalted with the Cata factions.
So! Perhaps it isn't a skill issue at all - perhaps I do NOT suddenly suck at being a Hunter... I can't wait to see the DPS I'll do in BM as well once I get my agility up where it should be.
Endgame? Please. I'm just getting started. :D
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)