You Could Call it My Preseason

Back when Cataclysm first dropped, I was in the middle of leveling a Draenei Paladin and the original Nevelanthana. Both were in Outland at that point, so I decided to rechristen their leveling process the Convoy to L85. Complete with a song from 1975 filled with CB radio lingo:

Doing both toons, it took me from December 7, 2010 to January 19, 2011 for them both to ding L80 and then head for Cataclysm zones. Getting to L85 took a bit longer, the first week of March, but still that was also not going totally gangbusters either.

Mists was a bit different. I decided on Azshandra as my new main not too long before Mists was released, and I leveled her all the way straight to L90, mixing up Battlegrounds with questing out in the field. That misadventure took from August 2012 until June 2013 to complete. Of course, I was also heavily playing SWTOR and LOTRO at the time, so that also contributed to the slowness in leveling.

Why do I mention these things? Because I have a history of not rushing out and heading straight into the new expac. That contributed to my thought process in deciding to start from scratch in Mists with a new toon --Az, in this case-- because I figured there'd be no way I'd enjoy the chaos up in Pandaria. 

Looking back on it, I think the only time I logged in for a brand new experience and actually followed through on it was the release of WoW Classic itself.

The scene in Teldrassil on Myzrael-US,
August 2019. I wonder how many of
those toons are still being actively played?

I logged in, looked around, got a few screenshots, and then logged for a couple of hours, figuring that there'd be no way in hell I could complete any quests with that crowd around. (Plus it was dinner time.)

Hmmm... I do recall checking out the Cataclysm pre-patch on the night it went live, but I also recall making a ton of gold on Neve porting people back to Orgrimmar from Dalaran.

So imagine my surprise when I was heading to Zul'Farrak to farm some greens there to disenchant* and my questing buddy --who I was grouped up with-- said "we're kidnapping you".

***

Now, you have to also understand that allergies have been killing me all week, and I finally gave in last night and took some Benadryl, so I wasn't exactly in a very lucid state. Still, my brain completely fizzled out when suddenly two more people popped into our group and they decided on running Utgarde Keep.

"Uh... I was actually feeling tired, because I took some Benadryl."

I believe somewhere in the responses to my declaration was my questing buddy saying she was having none of that, and since she'd already joined me in Zul'Farrak I began waking up because I had a hard time keeping up with her and killing things.

So, away to Northrend I went.

I told my questing buddy on the ship to Valiance Keep that "this doesn't count" as far as me going to Northrend. I only collected a flight point --force of habit-- and then we did the same for Howling Fjord and away we went.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this I completely woke up and briefly thought about fleeing --the old fight or flight response to a surprise-- but I suppressed it. My questing buddy was looking out for me, and I'd be a pretty damn poor friend if I went and hid.

Although I'll be completely honest in that when I switched my Details meters from Threat to Damage, I wanted to hide from embarrassment: Deuce was barely doing more damage than my questing buddy, who was healing on her Disco Priest. 

The warlock, who was also a good friend, was doing about 80-85% of the damage in every single fight.

And it's not like Deuce is totally undergeared, as she has the full Brutal set from running Alterac Valley, plus the PvP Staff. None of those pieces are terrible, and they fit in roughly with a range from T4 through Zul'Aman to T5 gear from TBC. So, roughly middle of the pack epic gear but with Resilience, that classic PvP stat that keeps a body from being one shot in Battlegrounds. The difference was that the warlock had at least T5 --and in some cases T6-- gear, so he was running with easily some of the best stuff out of raids in TBC Classic. You know, stuff I would have had a shot at getting if I'd not had to drop progression raiding back in January.

Which then reminded me that I was once again on the outside looking in, and that I was essentially being carried through this instance.

So in the span of an hour, I went from surprised/stunned to reluctant to grateful to happy to embarrassed/humiliated. 

***

Oh, how was Utgarde Keep itself?

Like riding a bike, really. After a few minutes you remember the cadence. 

Although to be fair, I know more about interrupts and how things tick for a Frost Mage than I did back in 2010-2011, and that probably cost me a bit on the damage meters. I would interrupt and use Spell Steal to keep the additional damage off of the tank, who, being a Bear tank with a lot of T5-6 gear himself, didn't really need the help.**

I'd have completely enjoyed myself if it weren't for that constant reminder that I was not pulling my weight. Even the mage table is totally useless for Northrend, since the mana and health pools are so much larger than those found in Outland.

Someone shared a couple of quests along the way, and I accepted the first one strictly from muscle memory and then I realized what I was doing. I then refused the second quest and deleted that first quest from my log. Not until I officially go to Northrend will I do any quests up there.

And that concluded the first night in my "preseason" before I officially head to Northrend. 

I was extremely happy to be back in Outland by myself this morning.

*Long story, but in order to progress in Tailoring, after a certain point you need items such as Imbued Netherweave. To make THAT, you need Arcane Dust, which is found by disenchanting TBC Classic greens. But in order to get to the Enchanting level to disenchant THAT, I need to get to 275 in Enchanting. Deuce, being 230-ish, needed to get up to 275, which meant targeting green gear for disenchanting so I could then turn around and use FOR enchants to raise my skill level. And to find the green gear that would disenchant properly, the best places to look are in Uldaman and Zul'Farrak.

See? Clear as mud.

**It's still good practice, though, like using Frost Nova and then Deep Freeze to keep a caster in a mob from healing/casting.

Movement at the Speed of Plot

I entered The Deadmines last night for the first time in months.

With me were my oldest's Hunter, Tasarae, one of the Mage team on his Pally alt, and his daughter's Mage alt. I recruited a friend from Az's old Tuesday Molten Core runs, and she came along on her Bear tank alt.

All of us at level, and one of us setting foot inside for the first time.

We wiped three times --the last time trying to down Cookie after Van Cleef was dead-- and we pulled off a couple of fantastic recoveries after we had a couple of packs of ads on us.

All in all, it was amazing. I'd not had quite as much fun in a while.

***

Tasarae got to learn how Hunter pulls in an instance work, and I learned that I can tank --kinda sorta-- if I need to. My Bear friend had never been in Deadmines with a Bear before, and she was thoroughly enjoying how much fun it was to Bear tank things.* And in spite of me having a couple of levels on her, I simply could not pull aggro from her.

My Mage buddy healed us as best he could, and his daughter's Mage learned to enjoy sheeping things and blasting enemies with fire.

The instance itself, as my Mage team buddy said, was pretty much a perfect introductory instance. You learn the basics here and can take those lessons with you later on. 

I was teasing my oldest about how she was going to be gunning for our raid team's Hunter puller, and she gave me a look that said "oh HELL no". 

"But really," I said, "you're learning the same things that we use in Naxxramas today. That's why I don't like boosting so much, because this is how you learn to play your class."

"I'm still not raiding anytime soon," she replied.

***

The slow reveal of the extent of the weapon of mass destruction was not lost on my oldest. When we reached the final door and blasted our way in with a cannon, she said "Woah! Look at that!" 

She knew there was a boat ahead, as we'd been chatting about it in Discord, but she was stunned by the size of the thing. And the weapons.

And in that moment, the plot came full circle.

This was what the Defias were working toward, and what they intended to unleash upon Stormwind.

***

I suppose it comes as no surprise that in addition to my regular blogging I've been writing about Card's continuing adventures on the side, with an eye toward a climax in the Deadmines.** 

The questing in the Abbey, throughout Elwynn, and into Westfall all point a player toward a reveal as to why the Defias are the way they are, and even then there's plenty of plot points that a toon never knows about, even after the entry into the Deadmines is completed and the note found on Van Cleef's body points a player in the direction of who might be in league with the Defias within the Stormwind nobility. Hell, even once you get to L60 and defeat Onyxia you still don't know everything there is to know.

In that respect, I believe Blizz did a fantastic job of giving the player enough to go on, but not so much that they know everything. In reality, people don't know everything about what's going on --even if you think you do, you don't-- and so the Defias storyline reflects that. A player may find out everything Blizz has written on the subject (including the comics) but the player isn't privy to that information. And besides, you could make the argument that when what happens in WoW Classic contradicts the comics, I'd argue that WoW Classic should trump the comics in that regard. After all, the MMO is what we experience.

And the Defias' story is a cautionary tale as well, when your belief in your own correctness blinds you to everything else. In a way, it's a perfect tale for the past year or two.

Or, to borrow a few lines from what I've been working on...

"We still don't know who threw that rock," Mathias added. "That regicide remains our biggest unsolved case. But the Queen's murder not only crystallized the nobles against the Stonemasons Guild but turned the general populace against them as well. Tiffin was well liked, and unless you were here you'd never understand the jolt her death did to the city."

 

He stared at the floor for what felt like an eternity. "At the end of the riots, Edwin vowed revenge and left Stormwind with most of the Guild members. He hadn't been seen since, but I guess we now know what he's been up to."

I downed my water, wishing it was rum instead. "But why destroy everybody? That makes no sense."

 

"He believes that if you're not with him, you're against him," Mom replied. "That has always been a fault of Edwin's: he sees things only in terms of sharp divides. For him, and those like him, there is no morally gray area; it's only black and white. It's very easy for him to slip from feeling that he'd been wronged into the view that everybody else is an enemy. I look at Edwin and think that could have been me or your father, given the right circumstances." 

 

She looked over at Mathias, her eyes haunted. "It's.... hard for me to be here, Mat," she whispered. "I don't have the control I need any more, and it's taking all I have to not grab a pair of daggers and hunt for Edwin myself. He's earned a death warrant from me, but I know that once I start I won't be able to stop, and I can't risk that."

*Her main is a Warrior Tank, so she's familiar with how.... busy.... it is to be a Warrior tank.

**There's other stories floating around too, such as the Missing Diplomat questline. The Missing Diplomat questline is perfect for someone who has ties to the shadowy underworld, such as a certain protagonist whose family is connected to SI:7. It is also great in that it gets Card out of Stormwind and on the road toward Dustwallow Marsh, where she can begin the quest to assemble her own wand.

Letting My Fear Flag Fly

The Warlock Follies continue unabated, starring me as a Warlock who'd prefer to be in a good match of Warsong Gulch right about now.

I experimented with just Fearing packs while attempting to use the Voidwalker to tank the one that I've left behind, and I've had mixed results. About 3/4 of the time the baddies that I cast Fear on ran right into another pack, and I went from having 2-3 enemies at at time to 5-7. That's pretty much in line with what I expected, particularly given the closed-in nature of some of these groups.

Given these results, maybe going Destruction is an option to try to quickly AoE down mobs. I'll have to think about that, although I'd prefer to run Battlegrounds with the Lock than, say, instances.

***

Speaking of instances, I've run Deadmines twice on Dominius. First time, things went fairly well up until the Healer dropped group. Second time, not so much.

Since I hadn't run any instances on Adelwulf back in the day, my Warlock experiences in an instance were limited to the effect that Warlocks have on group dynamics. Just like any player, good players enhance the effect of the group and do a great job of DPS-ing down mobs and bosses. But bad players have a greater effect than, say, your average DPS.

While a Mage, Rogue, or Druid can pull mobs like crazy if they don't watch their threat, the presence of the Demon companion adds a level of complexity that only the Hunter shares. I can't count the number of times over the years that I've experienced a wipe caused by a Hunter's pet or a Demon was set to "Aggressive" in an instance. And then when you factor in the Warlock's Howl of Terror or Fear abilities, well....

Yeah, I'm not the greatest fan of poorly played Warlocks in instances.*

So... Let's talk about some things that I need to improve on.

***

In the first Deadmines run, almost as soon as we started, the Healer started giving the Warrior tank grief.

First, about tank's lack of a shield. Second, about how he wasn't going to bail the tank out if he wasn't keeping up sufficient rage. And after a few pulls, he started grumbling about the tank's pulling technique.

These grumblings weren't whispers to the group leader (me**), but said out loud in party chat. I've been in runs where I get whispers from someone complaining about another person in the group, but nothing quite like this.

Nevertheless, we kept going and downed the first boss. I'd made a point of the following rotation when fighting, and it seemed to work well enough: DoT the pack, do a Life Tap to boost my mana, Drain Health to add some health back, then repeat the cycle. Instead of a Voidwalker, I opted for the Imp and kept him on Passive until I told him to attack specific targets. This is the "prior experience with Warlocks" working here.

Once that first boss was downed, we started forward, and I realized the Healer remained in place.

I called out for the group to hold up a sec, steeled myself for another set of complaints, and asked the Healer what was up.

He said nothing.

And then he DCed.

"Really?" the tank asked. "Was I doing that bad a job?"

"No," I replied. "You were holding threat well enough, and you weren't running around like crazy trying to pull the entire area."

I took stock of the situation, and started putting out requests in LFG, LookingForGroup, and in the instance chat for a replacement healer.

No dice.

We eventually had to drop group, because without a healer we weren't going to proceed.

***

The second Deadmines run was, well, different.

Unlike the previous run, I was struggling to keep up with everybody. Not as in running with everyone, but trying to keep the DoTs up and whatnot. I'd also run out of Soul Shards prior to the run, so I was trying to kill as many Defias in Moonbrook as I could to obtain them, make Cookies, and distribute them to the group I was putting together. (Again.) By the time the group was ready, I had even managed to get a Soulstone together, so I figured that if I needed extra shards, I could suck them out of mobs we'd run into.

But still, it felt like I wasn't pulling my weight in the fights, as I was at that level (L18) where you get boosts to some of your other abilities, but not a new ranking in the DoT capabilities. Being specced as Affliction, DoTs were kind of my thing. And not being L20, that meant I didn't have an AoE I could use in an emergency.*** Even beyond that, I felt I was missing something that I couldn't place my finger on.

At the same time, the Mage began running ahead, exclaiming "Look, I'm a tank!!" and aggroing the next mob, forcing the Druid tank to catch up and pull aggro back to keep the Mage from getting plastered.

Oh, this isn't going to end well, I thought.

Two bosses down, we headed into the Foundry, working our way down the ramp. This is the locale where those remote control units the Goblin Engineers drop can wreak havoc. At the base of the ramp, the Druid pulled, and we had another three enemy mob to deal with.

Then all hell broke loose.

I was busy dropping DoTs and when I focused on the main screen again****, we didn't have a mob of 3, but 8-10.

"WTF!" the tank called.

"Shit!"

"Ow!"

We wiped.

We all appeared back at the graveyard, and the tank asked me "Did you use ss back there?"

For a brief second, my mind went blank. Was he accusing me of pulling all those extra mobs? "It wasn't me," I responded. "I only hit the mob you pulled."

"..."

"And," I continued, "I keep the Imp on a tight leash so this sort of thing doesn't happen."

"... I meant soulstone."

Oh crap. I completely forgot to set the Soulstone on the Healer.

"OH," I finally replied. "I thought you were accusing me of aggroing the entire group back there. No, I forgot. Sorry about that."

We got back into the Deadmines and I made a point of creating a Soulstone and tagging the Healer with it, and then letting the tank know I did that.

Or I thought I set it up, until I realized that something wasn't right again, but I didn't have time to find out what it was because everybody was running forward.

Gah.

We finished the Foundry, and then the DPS Pally dinged. He then surged to the front, exclaiming "I'm the tank now!"


Not again.

This is how it went through the instance, up until we got to the ship. We fought through Smite, went up the ramp, turned right, and then the Pally jumped up onto the Wheel. Everybody else followed, except for me, because the mob he'd aggroed zeroed in on me as I was in the back, and as I was surrounded I couldn't do anything even if I ran.

The Healer jumped down to rez me, while the Pally tank was saying, "Hey, I thought you guys were skilled."

Given that in the number of times I've run Deadmines --both pre- and post-Cata-- I think I've only jumped onto the wheel as a viable strategy to bypass mobs maybe 2-3 times. And this was definitely the first time since roughly 2013 or so.

But still, it was incredibly humiliating, first forgetting to Soulstone, and now not remembering the wheel.

Ah, but things weren't done.

While I was trying to climb on the Wheel after I'd been rezzed, I aggroed that same damn pack again and jumped off the platform into the water to escape them, figuring that I'd lose them after jumping down.

Well, that didn't work, as the pack came down and zapped me from behind.

"You'd better go rez him," the Pally tank said to the (former) Druid Tank, who came down and rezzed me.

"You should have died up here so we could rez you from here."

"Right," I replied, just focusing on finishing this damn thing and being done with it.

Even if I'd have managed to get up on the Wheel that first time, it wouldn't have saved us any extra time as we still had to fight the same mobs because the Pally tank got cute and ran around, picking them up anyway for no reason other than "just because".

The rest of the instance proceeded without incident, but it wasn't until afterward that I realized that I hadn't actually clicked on the Healer before setting the Soulstone, so it was actually set to me. But since we didn't lose the Healer, I was actually spared that further humiliation.

***

About the best thing that came out of those two runs was that the Rogue in the second Deadmines run, who'd remained pretty much silent the entire run, whispered me at the end that he was going to be doing some dueling and asked if I wanted to come. I told him no thanks, as I had to get going to bed. While that was technically correct, I just wanted to log off and not think about Warlocks, Soulstones, and the Deadmines for a while.

For a person who'd actually played a Warlock before, I felt woefully unprepared for being in an instance as a Warlock. While I knew a lot about what not to do, what I should do was where I was lacking. Rotations are one thing, since you can figure out a mana efficient way of inflicting damage while being out in the field, but forgetting how to do a Soulstone? That's pretty basic --and critical-- stuff.

And the activity a Warlock has to balance is insanely high compared to a Rogue or Mage. Managing the demon, making sure that it is actually doing damage to the right toon, and keeping all the DoTs going means that a Lock's instance activity is actually harder than in the average Battleground, where the Lock is looking more to lay crowd control via Fear nearly as much as DoTs and AoEs. In a BG, a Lock can let their Demon just go do their thing with minimal supervision, but in an instance I was tempted more than once to simply dismiss that Imp so I could focus on the rest of what was going on.

I realize that this was good for me in the long run, as I needed this experience if I'm going to level Dominius up to L60. Better to learn these lessons now rather than at, say, L35-40. I'm not going to lie and say it was fun, however. It wasn't.





*And that's coming from a player who --the past several years, at least-- prefers to play Rogues. My brethren don't make my job any easier, as poorly played Rogues will forget that what they do in an instance affects the entire group, so if you get cute and try to sneak past mobs --accidentally aggroing them-- they all come after your companions if you decide to use Vanish to escape.

**I'm not kidding when I say that I frequently get assigned the job of pulling a group together. And if you knew me in real life, you'd laugh because I'm a big introvert.

***The first Warlock AoE is Rain of Fire, learned at L20.

****I was cycling through the entire pack, making sure I had DoTs up on each Goblin, so I was focusing on the enemy target icon and making sure the right DoTs were present.

Where Have You Gone, Svala Sorrowgrave?

The news that Blizzard is going to stop putting out new 5-man instances for Mists seems to have caused a bit of a stir.

Those people who gear up using LFR kind of shrugged and said "no big deal".  So did those who like the new Scenario concept.  And the "I love dailies" crowd chuckled and continued muttering to themselves in a corner.

But for me, I see this as the continuation of what started in Cataclysm.

Cataclysm began the deviation from the standard Warcraft pattern by instituting Heroic-only 5-mans, and then segregated them further by separating them out in the LFG queue.  I can presume this was done so that those who wanted to either gear up to the latest tier or max their VP acquisition could do so in the most efficient manner, but as in all things there were unintended consequences.

By subdividing 5-mans like that, the queue times soared to levels only previously seen in obsolete 5-man end game instances.*  Starting with the Zuls --Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub-- people began to complain about a lack of variety in their instance runs.  Finally, the new Heroics created an "asshat divide" within 5-mans:  asshats flooded the 5-man Heroics, particularly the latest ones, while people who simply enjoyed running instances gravitated toward the baseline 5-man Normal instances.

However, those who enjoyed 5-man Normals found their options sadly lacking as compared to their Heroic brethren.  Unlike Wrath, which had the same number of Normal 5-mans as their Heroic version --16, if you were curious-- there were only 7 Normals vs. 14 Heroics in Cataclysm.**  Perhaps the statistical data for Wrath showed that not a lot of people ran the ICC Normals, but instead of making the last patch's instances Heroic-only, Blizz took their solution a step further in Cata and eliminated the Normal option entirely from all major patch instances.  It wouldn't be so drastic a step if it weren't that Cata dropped with only 7 Normal instances as opposed to 12 in Wrath.

And now we come to Mists.

Mists shipped with 4 Normal 5-mans (9 Heroic), and that's going to be it.  If you're an instance runner, you're out of luck.

While Blizzard will point out the Scenario model that is new to Mists, they are all tuned for max level and are designed for a "dungeon-lite" experience.  I look on them as the equivalent of a multi-player Daily that you can queue for, not a traditional instanced dungeon.

So what happened to the slate of instances we are used to seeing in an expac?

LFR.

Blizzard has decided to use LFR for mid-expac progression, and as a consequence instances have drawn the short end of the stick.  To be fair there were only 4 new instances post-release in Wrath versus 5 in Cataclysm, but those 4 represented only 25% of the overall total of Wrath instances as opposed to 36% in Cata.  Think about it:  Wrath shipped with 12 instances, while Cata had 9 (7 normal).  If you look at Normal instances alone, this is a further erosion from the Wrath model:  12 -> 7 -> 4.

If you only ran Normals, Blizzard didn't design any new instances for you at all once Cataclysm dropped, so this erosion isn't new behavior to you.  What is new, however, are how few Normal instances are now available and the lack of future prospects for those instances.

As much as Dave Kosak Twittered that there will be more 5-mans in future expacs, the numbers don't lie.  Instances are less important to Blizzard moving forward.  Scenarios and LFR will get the development time previously allocated to instances, and the expectation is that you will use instances to assist you in getting that initial "raid ready", but instances as a viable max level activity will be phased out.

Before someone says that Blizzard is swimming in money given the number of subs that WoW has, remember that profit doesn't translate into more development staff.  Even if there were more development staff around, items such as Pet Battles have taken up significant development time, further eroding the time to devote to 5-man instances.

Finally, let's not forget the elephant in the room:  Titan.  It could also be that Blizzard is shifting priorities to their next gen MMO.  Any low hanging fruit, such as instance development, will get put on the back burner.

I think we can safely say that the BC/Wrath era of instances is now over.  I'll miss having a lot of instances to run, as my limited playing time prohibits even LFR from being an option, and Scenarios are of little use to someone still leveling a toon in Pandaria.  But I also thought it a mistake by Blizzard in Cataclysm to not pair up Normal instances with the latter Heroics, as those Normals became a refuge from the drama that so often infected Cata Heroics.

But hey, popularity doesn't lie, right?




*I once waited 2 hours for the queue to pop for a 5-man Heroic Tempest Keep/MgT run back in Cata.  Amazing how much farming you can get done in that time.

**Since BC instituted the Heroic we can't count Vanilla, but in BC there were 16 instances and all had Normal and Heroic settings.

This Was His Place of Power -- You are NOTHING Here!

I had a few hours to myself late the other week, so I finally decided to queue up for the TOR equivalent of an non-raid instance, known as a Flashpoint in-game.

The nice thing about TOR is that you can run multiplayer content without setting foot in a Flashpoint or a raid (aka an Operation) by simply running a few Heroic missions**.  Heroics take a lot less time than the average WoW Instance or TOR Flashpoint, so you can squeeze them fairly easily into any free time you have.  In some respects the Heroic concept is similar to Scenarios in Mists, but whereas Scenarios went for more of an instance feel with mobs and bosses (initially at least) the TOR Heroics can span the entire gamut between the old WoW group quests to more standard instances.  Certain Heroics, such as Fall of the Locust, have more of an Azjol-Nerub feel in their focus and speed, while others such as Destroy the Beacons is more a standard group quest.

Although Heroics provided me with some familiarity with multiplayer content in TOR, I still wasn't sure what to expect in a Flashpoint.  A dungeon is a dungeon is a dungeon, right?  Well, not really.

Unlike most other MMOs, TOR's Flashpoints are designed for four people.  For the WoW-centric, that means a Tank:Healer:DPS ratio of 1:1:2 instead of the traditional 1:1:3*.  That gives a bit more importance to DPS, because with a few exceptions a WoW 5-man is tuned in such a way that you could lose a single DPS and still survive a trash mob or a boss.  In TOR, if you lose a DPS, that's half of your expected DPS output disappearing.

Well, that's not quite a fair assessment, since the tank and healer in a TOR Flashpoint are expected to pull their weight in DPS too, but their primary responsibilities lie with threat management and keeping their squadmates upright.  And everyone --I do mean everyone-- is expected to provide CC as needed.

A case in point:  I've been in instances where people have simply refused to CC something --even when asked-- as if they were personal affronts on their core abilities.  Runs I'd prefer to forget in Magister's Terrace, Arcatraz, and Blackrock Depths come to mind.  But in the TOR 4-man Heroics I've been in, that's never been a problem.  In fact, the one time that someone tried to chain pull ala Drak Theron or Lost City of the Tol'vir, we wiped and the Jedi Guardian said "Okay, THAT was a stupid idea."

So.  I had a pretty good idea what to expect, but I decided that the smartest move for me was to take an alt and queue up for a low end Flashpoint.  My expectation was that the lower level flashpoints would have easier mechanics than the higher level ones.  Just like you wouldn't want to throw a noob into the deep end of the pool and queue up Magister's Terrace at level, I didn't want to find out about all sorts of esoteric boss mechanics the hard way with my max level Gunslinger.

Therefore, I pulled out my Jedi Sentinel and queued up for a random.  In short order I found myself on Athiss, being told to jump down the hole to the entry.  (I found out on a later run that the hole had a sliceable  elevator.  Oh well.)

Athiss is the classic "send an expedition in to examine ruins, they run into trouble, and you have to rescue them" instance.  This kind of defines Brann Bronzebeard's entire modus operandii, if you ask me.  It's a part-outside part-inside Flashpoint, which does make it interesting.  I've been wracking my brain on anything similar that I've run through, and about all I can come up with is something like Halls of Origination or Utgarde Keep, where the dungeon goes outside for a bit.  The thing is, WoW's instances tend to be very narrow affairs, shuttling the party from one boss to the next, and Athiss' outdoors areas feel much more wide open.  Maybe not as wide open as Old Hillsbrad, but still very broad.  If you wanted to spend a lot of time you could clear it all, but that wasn't why we were there.  Instead of the game imposing an artificial narrow scope, the party ourselves did by negotiating from point A to point B.

Inside, naturally, is a more traditional affair with anyone involved with instance running.  There are a few trash mobs involved, and then a mini-boss or two, and then a boss.  For the Republic faction, you're learning about the area as you go; I suspect an Imperial group would already have a good grasp of the background given that it was a Sith area to start with.  The end boss fight has a few interesting mechanics --think of Ionar in Halls of Lightning and you get the idea-- but it does take a while to win the fight.  The healer was certainly kept busy, and I'm glad that it wasn't my job.

Okay, enough basic review (as if you haven't seen this sort of thing around the net already).  What did I think?

I liked the assortment of enemies to fight.  They ran the gamut from Weak through Champion (Boss), and that disparity made DPS-ing down a mob harder than usual.  The Weak enemies still pack a punch, and if you don't take care of them quickly their attacks can take out one of your group.  Group dynamics are still the same as always:  somebody focuses on the bigger bad while others perform clean-up duty.***

However, one thing that WoW does have that TOR doesn't is add-ons, and you really start to feel that lack in Flashpoints.  Maybe it's because I've used add-ons as a crutch for so long, but in a Flashpoint you end up using a lot more buttons than while out questing or in your average Heroic, and I missed the UI add-ons that WoW has.  You have to adjust to a standard UI, and that means making sure that you have your button priorities set up properly.****

Still, that's a minor quibble, and something I have to make a mental adjustment on.

On the whole, I liked the feel of the Flashpoint.  What I saw in both Athiss and Mandalorian Raiders (the second Flashpoint that I ran, this time as a DPS Commando) was a way to use voice and sound that Blizz has yet to implement in WoW.  Sure, WoW has the occasional voiceover/intro scene/cutscene, but it also has the standard aggro - PC death - different phase - boss death type of commentary.  Anything else tends to get put in the scrolling text.  Using voiceovers from a boss (or someone else) while running the Flashpoint provides flavor that you don't see in WoW, especially when the voiceovers are from people that you don't encounter for a long while.  Being taunted (via audio) every step of the way through Mandalorian Raiders by the leader of Clan Varad has a completely different feel for it than "Prince Taladram Yells: Who trespasses in the Old Kingdom?"  Imagining what a WoW instance would look like if the Svala Sorrowgrave scene in Utgarde Pinnacle were throughout an entire instance is what Bioware was shooting for.

However, I can see where a large number of WoW players wouldn't give a damn about flavor or text or voice at all; "see it and kill it" is their mantra, and if they run the same Flashpoint a dozen times, they don't want to have to "see all this crap again", as one WoW player I know put it.  "I play this to kill things and to down raid bosses, I don't play this to think."*****

The player who is predisposed to like a story driven game like TOR will like their approach to instances; for other people it is more of a hit-and-miss proposition.  I can see where the lack of add-ons will drive some people nuts, and they flee to the safety of WoW (or Rift) and its numerous add-ons.  But I'll be honest in that once I got used to having to prioritize differently, it wasn't so bad to run without add-ons.  You stop worrying about damage meters and trying to fine tune your threat management; you just roll with it and do what is best for the group.

And for the record, my old Core Duo processor machine held up pretty well throughout the Flashpoints, thank-you-very-much.  Sure, it would have been nice for the graphics to draw a bit quicker at the intro, but I  survived.

*Or Age of Conan's 2:2:2.  Yes, AoC's instances are designed for two tanks, two heals, and two DPS.  The mobs hit pretty hard in AoC's instances, just like their elites out in the game world.

**For the uninitiated, Heroic missions (Heroics for short) are the equivalent of extended group quests in WoW.  They are entirely optional, can be run for badges as dailies, and are a great way to essentially perform mini group content without sacrificing too much time.  Since they're not part of the main story line, you don't feel required to run them, unlike those group quests in Age of Conan.  Also, since the groups are entirely player built you're not stuck with a complete trinity of tank-DPS-healer; I've been in heroics that had three DPS and a healer, or one tank and three healers.  If you remember pulling an impromptu group together to try to kill Knucklerot and Luzran in the Ghostlands, then you get the idea of how putting together a Heroic operates.  So, if you're in TOR and you see someone ask in Gen Chat about running Heroics, they're not talking about Heroic level dungeons like you would in WoW.

***Just like in Alterac Valley there are some people who actually stay and defend the towers while everybody else rushes off to attack Vann or Drek.

****In PvP, that means everybody is on the same UI and add-on footing, which is always a good thing.

*****This sort of person is also most likely to start yelling "I'm bored!" after blitzkrieging through the content in Mists, but I digress.

It is... A Puzzlement!

Have you ever been in a run where you had to wonder what was going on in everyone else's heads?

I don't mean that in an asinine way, or even in a WTF OMG this-is-so-full-of-fail way, either.  Sometimes I feel like General Taylor in Good Morning Vietnam when he tells the Sergeant-Major that he's out of line:  "You're mean.  And this is just radio."

Last I checked, WoW was a game.  Sure, it can suck up a lot of your time, but no more than if you're a sports fanatic.  (Or a crafting fiend.)  But the thing is, in the end it's just a game.  It's supposed to be fun, and if you start acting out for no real reason, maybe it's time for you to take a bit of a break.

For example, I took my lowbie Warlock out for a spin yesterday and queued up for a random instance.  Out popped the new Shadowfang Keep.  SFK isn't the kindest place for casters due to line of sight issues, but I've done it before on Neve, so I figured this wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  To be honest, I needed the experience running through the renovated keep at-level before I get sucked into it in the Heroic queues, and I really needed to hammer out a rotation anyway.*

I was the only caster in a party which included a Pally tank and a Priest healer, with a Hunter and Warrior rounding out the DPS.  The instance began in typical fashion, with everyone exchanging greetings and buffing up.  After the first couple of trash pulls, however, one of the DPS asked if someone had a recount meter running.  While the healer posted the numbers, I mentioned that the DPS stats weren't going to mean much.  "They'll be all over the place," I said.

"Oh, I just want to see if my numbers are any better."

Okay, that's nice and all, but the surest way to improve your numbers if you're L19 is to get to L20.  I can understand the desire to maximize your rotation --hell, I was planning on tinkering with my rotation myself-- but asking for Recount numbers like that is a sneaky way of showing off your e-peen.

We kept winding our way through the keep, and I was bound and determined not to be a spell sink on the healer and kept my use of Life Tap to a minimum.  I'd run out of mana, and Life Tap just enough to get going again.  After several sessions of rinse-and-repeat, we downed one of the Bosses so I took a short break to drink my way up to full.  "Hang on a sec, mana," I said, noting that the healer sat down to drink too.

Did that stop the Draenei Pally?  Nope.  He kept right on going, as did the other two DPS.

The Warrior and Hunter overtook the Pally and took turns pulling instead.  I was starting to wonder when everything was going to hit the wall, but we reached the antechamber before what used to be Arugal's old hideout, and I realized the instance was at an end.

Then I got the pop-up saying that there was a vote to kick the Draenei Pally.  The reason?  "He does nothing."

I am not making that up.

Yes, because a Pally running full tilt through the instance wasn't fast enough for at least one person, there was a vote kick entered instead.

I voted no, and the measure failed.

What surprised me was that nobody complained about either the Pally's or the other DPS' behavior.  Typically, any of this would have set off at least something from someone, but people were tightlipped throughout the run.  Well, the only complaint anyone had at all was when my Warlock bit it at the end.  I was perched way up high atop the stairs, getting a great view for my DoTs and AoEs, when I got laid low by one of the last pistol barrages.**  "Stay behind him when he unleashes those," one of the other DPS snipped at me.

Whatever.

For some hours after my run through that instance, I still puzzled over it.  That wasn't a bad run, or a fail run, or even a nerd rage run, but what I couldn't really fathom were the motivating factors behind my puggees' behavior.

Nobody was from the same server, let alone the same guild, so that wasn't it.  The Draenei Pally was already tanking at breakneck speed before he got abruptly replaced by the other two DPS, and the Pally didn't say a word.  He was doing second most damage, so it's not like he was failing badly in that arena, either.***

I just wish I knew what the hell their motivation was.



*Yes, I'd read several of the guides online, but I believe that it's important to work some things out yourself.  Besides, I'd specced as Affliction, which isn't the best PvE spec out there.  For BGs, on the other hand...

**This is akin to the last boss in Vortex Pinnacle's instance-wide attack; even though I wasn't what would be considered the field of fire in any regular environment, Godfrey's attack apparently extends all the way to the roof.

***If anything, I was the one limping along with substandard DPS in my quest Whites and Greens.  But I also had the lowest level of the bunch. 

Habitually Speaking

Back when I first started playing WoW, I developed a lot of bad habits while leveling. 

My first 45 levels or so, Quintalan was Holy Spec, but since I rarely went into instances at that time all I knew how to do was quest --and kill things-- using my weak Holy Spec capabilities.  To compound the problem, I looked at gear the way I would in my pencil and paper RPGs:  a little bit of Intellect and a little bit of Strength never hurt, and look --something with Agility!  It never occurred to me that maybe I ought to concentrate on one stat and let the other gear fall by the wayside.

After I switched to Ret --at Soul's suggestion-- I developed another set of bad habits.  For example, I'd use tanking abilities in my attacks, which really don't go over well when you get into an instance.  And when leveling, I didn't have a concept of a rotation.  Sure, you could argue that Ret Spec in Wrath didn't have a rotation --and I'd not disagree with you either-- but the basic understanding behind a rotation escaped me.

Oh yeah, I was a noob.  I had my share of "HEY STOOPID!" moments out there in WoW.

It wasn't until I started pugging and got serious about understanding how a Ret Pally works that I finally broke out of these habits.  I tinkered with key bindings and how much you could load onto one button until I realized I needed more granularity than that.  (Such as saving Avenging Wrath for Bosses; you don't need it for trash.  Therefore, don't try to bind it on any of my attacks but leave it on a separate button.) 

Even when 4.0.1 dropped I didn't have moments quite like those first few months of playing WoW, and for that I can thank Tomakan.  He was mired somewhere in the 40s when 4.0.1 was released, and so I had plenty of time to work out how the new Ret rotations ought to work without all the clutter of higher level Ret capabilities.

But now, after having spent time leveling in the Cata zones, I've kind of backslid a bit.  I slack off on my rotations because I can, unless I'm dealing with multiple enemies at once (or an elite).  I've got some nice new skills on both Neve and the Pallys, but I haven't really adjusted my key bindings.*  I know that the Cata instances are harder than Wrath, but I haven't tested the limits of how quickly I can go through my rotation without pulling aggro.

WoW is still a learning process.  Maybe if you work at it hours a day for most days of the week, yeah, you can top out at a high level.  But most of us don't have that amount of spare time.  To get competent at your class, you need to dedicate some time, but nowhere near the levels seen by the elite raiding guilds. 

Unlike my noob experiences, I know what I need to do to get back on track.  I need to get into more Cata instances.

Am I worried about getting into Cata pugs?  Not really.  I like to be prepared, and if I can't be prepared, at least be overpowered.  What's killing me is the time factor.  I don't have the time to set aside two hours to cover a pug right now.  I can run BGs more quickly than what I've discovered via the Cata pugs I've been in, so I end up queuing for them instead.  (When Alterac Valley is looking to be quicker than a Cata pug, you know you've got time issues.)

So for the time being, I'm going to continue to quest and accumulate a punch sheet of things I need to do.  I'll get around to it.  Someday.  Maybe. 


*I instead lust after a Naga Razr, thinking about adding buttons there rather than upset my current balance.

Through the Looking Glass

While I was waiting for LFD last night, I was mentioning to Soul about how similar --yet different-- the questlines are between Alliance and Horde.  I've not done a lot of quests on Tomakan as I've been using the LFD tool a lot, but I have done several quest chains in Ashenvale, and I'm partway through the Shady Rest Inn chain in Dustwallow.  What continues to interest me is how essentially the same chain can be viewed through two different lenses.

Take Felfire Hill for example.  The Draenei simply can't believe that they traveled this far just to have a Legion outpost nearby, and want to eradicate it.  While you're cleaning out the mess of demons, the secret plans for the assault on Forest Song drop, and you are then sent to wipe out the Dreadlords.  You see the quest entitled "Never Again!" and you know how important it is for the Draenei to eliminate the Legion.

Sounds like a perfect fit for the Draenei, but until you see the Horde side, you can't help but think that the quest chain was custom designed for the Alliance.

The Orcs, however, are outraged that this group of demons managed to survive.  They have nothing but disgust and hatred for their former masters, and want to destroy them at all costs.  When the plans drop for the assault on Splintertree Post, the Horde questgiver gives you the quest "Never Again!" with the orders to eliminate the Dreadlords.  The Horde will never be subject to demons again, and you believe it.

Same quest chain, two equally valid --yet different-- viewpoints.

Another comparison is the Shady Rest Inn chain.  For the Alliance, you're given a quest to check up on a relative, and when you arrive in Theramore you discover that there was a fire, and the wife and kid of the relative died.  Your job is to investigate the fire and bring the perps to justice, because the Alliance's laws will be upheld.  Contrast that with the Horde:  You enter Dustwallow Marsh and pass by this burned out husk of an inn, with the owner wandering around dazed.  He's human, but not flagged as an enemy.  Well, you think, what the hell happened here?  You arrive in the Horde outpost in Dustwallow and are pulled aside by a questgiver.  Thrall, the giver explains, has received word about the fire at the Inn and he knows that because it's on the border of the Barrens the Horde is the main suspect.  Thrall is anxious to keep the peace, so your job is to investigate the fire to demonstrate the Horde's good faith in maintaining the truce.  And if it does turn out that Horde people are implicated, show no mercy.

The same questline begins with completely different motivations:  Alliance is personal/legal, Horde is diplomatic.

Now that that's out of the way, I want to drop a big gripe about the LFD tool:  lack of context.  So far as I can tell, there are no quests or common ground for the opposing faction in the Deadmines, Ragefire Chasm, or Stormwind Stockades.  Sure, there's an achievement involved, but with LFD nothing highlights the lack of context quite like those three.  If you're Alliance, the Searing Blade means absolutely nothing to you:  an Orc is an Orc is an Orc.  To the Horde, the Searing Blade is serious bidness:  they want to return to the "glory days" of being Fel Orcs in the Burning Legion, and will stop at nothing to overthrow Thrall and the rest of the current Horde leadership.  Likewise, I had never heard of the Defias Brotherhood until I started leveling an Alliance alt.  "Big whoop," I said.  "A bunch of thieves.  Try the Scarlet Crusade on for size instead."  But for the Alliance, the Defias represents a real threat to the existing order, and have a nasty ol' surprise in store for leveling characters.

Don't get me wrong, I like the LFD tool.  It allows solo artists a chance to check out instances they ordinarily would have a difficult time getting into.  From a lore standpoint, however, I have to wonder about the dungeonmaster achievements gained via the LFD tool.  There's no context for several of the instances, and there never will be.  What I'd like to see is a separate achievement, highlighting all of the quests that touch on an instance, and have a separate achievement for that.  Call it "Contextual Obligations" or something similar, emphasizing that your toon has been involved with the lore leading up to the instance.

(EtA:  Cleaned things up because, you know, I need an editor.)

News Flash

Quintalan learns to switch auras! Film at eleven!

Seriously, I never gave much thought to the aura I'm on when I was running an instance. Just turn on Retribution Aura and have at it. Okay, I've also been known to ignore the Crusader Aura that's been left on while flying around when the summons comes. And yeah, I occasionally forget to turn Crusader Aura on when flying.* (Stop laughing, Soul!)

But intentionally switching auras during an instance? Not on your life.

There were three pivotal moments for that in my aura education: taking out the Sons of Gruul; a forgettable Pit of Saron run; and perusing the details in the recount stats.

The sons of Gruul weren't an instance run. For those of you who quest, you already know that they're 5-man quests found in Blade's Edge in Outland, so why is this doing here? Because when I soloed those quests, I decided I needed more armor than what I was getting with all the buffs I was using, so I switched to Devotion Aura just prior to launching my attacks. Okay, my decision was also made in hindsight, because I felt that the first time I tried and failed to kill the first of the Sons of Gruul it was due to my taking too much damage. Since I wasn't about to simply replace my trusty old Sword of Justice (aka the tuning fork) that easily, I switched auras instead. That little boost seemed to do the trick as I was able to survive all of the encounters with the Sons of Gruul. Translation: even a Ret Pally can use Devotion Aura from time to time.

My second big learning came from a Pit of Saron run that didn't go quite so well. In that run we had one well geared tank who was taking a bunch of people new to the instance, and I was only on my second run at that. Well, we met Garfrost, and he had us for lunch. Twice. After that second wipe, I got tired of watching the frost stacks add up and switched on Frost Resistance Aura to help mitigate the frost damage. Between that and not having to run halfway across the area to find a boulder to break the contact for the frost debuff, we managed to survive that third time. (I believe the tank said "We have to find a boulder to break contact, don't scatter so broadly!" Hey, I was following the tank around. Me no dummy.)

That success with Garfrost gave me the insight that maybe it was better to switch auras more often, like when running up toward the final fight with Tyrannus. Or when the proto-drakes in Utgarde Keep start blasting fire.

My tweaking of the auras still bothered me, because I thought I was losing significant DPS just so I could mitigate the damage. On some of these high end instances my DPS count doesn't look very flattering, so I was wondering if I was hurting myself further in that area by switching out of Retribution Aura. Well, perusal of the recount data proved to me that I need not worry. Damage from Ret Aura was down in the pack after the Seals, Melee, and Divine Storm. With that knowledge in front of me, I felt better making smarter use of my Auras to help the team.

And besides, anything to help the healer works well with me.


*I have my excuses when farming for ore; Crusader Aura plus an epic mount mean that I zip by ore so fast it will occasionally not register in the searching. I've learned to leave Crusader Aura off when farming for Titanium.