A lost soul

I recently started a new toon, a dwarven shaman, who is now badly geared and seeking his way in the world. At level 25 he's Enhancement specced with high portion of gear of +Sta and +Int contrary to the current +Agi gearing.

The answer to the Why? part is that this toon is accompanying my son's dwarven warlock and helping him to level up to the group of Three Stooges. Then it will be Three Stooges (or Dunces) and son, for sure!

Now we levelled to the cap of trial, which is 20 (with 10g money cap which annoys my son immensely!) in less than two couple hours sessions. The starter area of dwarves at least till Wetlands is so streamlined that it's impossible to keep up with the exhilarating speed the story proceeds. As it happens, you overlevel the quests way too fast for the questing itself being meaningful except for the storylines present. Doubly so, if you do as we did, went for LFD right at level 15 when it all comes possible.

Only because my son kept dinging earlier than me - and got to 20 around the time I got to 18! - I had to try the warlock way of doing it. So I rolled a troll warlock on another server to see how it goes.

And it goes. Like wham-bang and so on.

Warlock is a killing machine.

But it didn't explain the difference in experience we saw, so the only explanation is professions. You see, my son had mining in his professions, while I had skinning/leathercrafting.

Note to self (and others): if you only want to level up a character in WoW, do pick Herbalism and Mining to go by. You increase the rate of gaining experience right away = shorten the time spent levelling.

By this experiment I learned two things about the game.

First of all, WoW has lost it's soul. The thing that made it special in the beginning. It has lost the questing and adventuring part which made it loved and special, as the quest content is overlevelled by design. This has resulted the fact that the LFD groups are worse and worse, as people are trying to level as fast as possible by killing the mobs in instances as fast as possible and not taking anything else into account. A simple boss with any other action than tank and spank is considered a poor boss, unless it can be downed in few seconds/minute.

The game actually forces the speed levelling on player. If you want to enjoy the quests and their 'challenge' at appropriate level, you have to freeze your experience. That is completely against the idea of level based RPG thinking and thus is out of the question for players. You cannot enjoy the easy mode way the Old World is crammed into your throat, even if you loved the story and quests. It's too darn easy and too darn fast to overlevel.

Secondly, I just like levelling more than doing the same old dailies in the level cap. Even though the quests get over levelled, even though the elites met along the way are too easy at equal levels, even though the greens just keep pouring in from each loot. The quests and the stories are worth it to me.

Beats reading a bad novel any - rainy - day.

But I'm not talking about sunny days anymore.

WoW has lost it's soul of questing in favor of speedy levelling to level cap.
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One you remember, the other you don't

I've been lately playing on my banker/AH toon, that being resto/balance druid. On and off through the AH blast and all, I somehow got into the healing business and made it the chore of my choice. All in all, I blasted through Northrend by dailies, just a few quest chains to keep things interesting and PUGs.

Of the quest chains I have to say that I'm very, very disappointed by the fact how the Wrathgate episode ends. It's very much the same lackluster anti-climax which is so familiar from the Cataclysm areas final quests. The chains just... end. In Wrathgate the end comes by Alexastra whispering the character to come to her, but then there is nothing. Only a kind of separate text blurb without anything relevant and the worst part is the fact that this happens every time you come close enough to the Wrathgate area, where Alexastra and her consort stay, like keeping guard for the dead.

What a stupid conclusion.

No more raiding into Undercity, no more feeling epic with the faction leader, no more being belittled by the big bad Forsaken.

Also what is evident is the fact that the content has been nerfed otherwise, too. You see, I soloed at about appropriate level some group content which I had hard time to complete as my protection warrior in this druid's restoration spec... with no problem at all!

Anyhow, the title of the post claims that you remember one but not the other. By this I mean that as I was PUGging through the Northrend normal instances, I noticed that I would remember that bad tank from the first time I ran with him, but not the good ones with whom I ran even some instances in a row. And how do I rank a bad tank in levelling instances? How's this: imagine the Oculus start. The deathknight tank runs off to the mobs along the route, running to the farthest one in each group and just pulling this one and hoping that the D&D area would pull the rest. He reaches the final mob guarding the portal to the platform before the rest of the group has been able to finish the leftovers even from the first mob. Oh, yes, he also has this uncanny way of getting enormous amounts of damage in within very short time.

How about this: the same deathknight tank runs through Gundrak in the speedy manner, through mobs without checking even his chat window. There comes a quiet moment and as I have ran out of mana, I announce it in party and general. As I sit down to drink, the tank picks up his pace again and almost, just almost dies before I come to save the day.

As I mention to this tank that he should at least wait for the healer to be around when he starts, the response is mind numbing.

"Why do you slack then?"

At least four runs with this Griseflax (see, I remember the name even) and I still cannot understand the creep.

Sadly, there have been a couple of excellent deathknight tanks along the way, whose names totally elude me. Thank you, dear anonymous tanks, for saving my day and playing the game as it should be played.

As a concentrated group effort, by taking everyone into account and making the best of the group. Rather than being better than the rest.

Thank you good tanks. Sorry I don't remember your names.
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Light days, bright future (yawp)

Weekend passed by doing some gardening, feeding kids and dogs and ... well, that was more or less it. Not much gaming, some moments of WoW with some moment of supervising the youngest son playing WoW. He had deserved his couple of hours of overpowered DK in Zangarmarsh by being a real superman in the garden, singlehandedly cutting a huge shrubbery down.

No elderberries. No NI!

What struck me over the one heroic I ran (and another I tried to run...) with my spriest is that the heroics are way more demanding than the normals. So much so that the gearing progression isn't too simple by any means. I know I have stated it earlier in WotLK that there wasn't any real road plan, but that was for the raiding through the heroics. Now the bar is set lower, making the progression not so linear from the normals up.

So either the heroics are too hard or the normals are too easy: there doesn't seem to be a middle ground, which makes the instance grind not so welcome anymore.

Then again, I'm closing the 250k gold again, without the daily stress of updating the sales or anything. I've been updating the AH every other day after the 48 hour limit expires, and I'm still pumping some nice income out of the system.

The big news in Finland was the general election held on Sunday, in which the Nationalist True Finnish party came out as the winner. It shares all the characteristics of all the Nationalist parties in history, being populistic, conservative, right-wing group of people. Add the confusion caused by this to the current problems of EU economics and you can see a nice and warming springtime for everyone. Light days and bright future. What ever the outcome from this is, the initial responses of people threatening to move out of the country due this vote is something I do not condone. Instead, I agree with this blog post linked here that it's time to stay, support the sanity and make sure this doesn't happen again.

Gnomore didn't get any time due to the nice weather, but I have something in store for this feller.

Laters!
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Three on two occasions

Previously on Three Stooges:

After seriously banging their head on the Lost City of Tol'Vir without seeing a single glimpse of hope on General Husam and later Lockmaw, the worrisome threesome decided to tackle on an old nemesis of theirs. The reason to give up the Lost City of Tol'Vir was due to the fact that even though General Husam was put to rest, the fight felt like sheer effort on luck, with no effect based on the way the three were performing. Lockmaw even more so, and the collective intellect suggested that the main reason to this is the lack of survivability of the lowest common denominator, the Tank.

The old nemesis was... Mr. Sunshine himself, The Lich King in Hall of Reflections, into which the three plunged themselves like vaseline to... well, slided in like... /snap Ouch. Entered the instance like a brave group of - undermanned but severely overgeared - adventures.

For the first time ever the instance felt like it had felt in full group at the glory days of WotLK, when the tank was overgearing the content and AoE ruled the world.

Needles to say, the instance was a breeze and the trio decided to fulfill the one instance needed for the Rogue's Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement: the Halls of Stone, in which he was lacking the Maiden of Grief.

In short, the three went wham-bang through these two instances, gained Guild achievement on one of them and lived happily ever after.

Yesterday, current time (check the timestamp, please)

Instead of taking on the Lost City of Tol'Vir, the three decided to go for the Halls of Origination. Wider selection of nice bosses and sidetracking, the instance 'felt' like a good second choice for the undermanned group.

The trash from the beginning, the menace of an unsuspecting PUG even, was just about the right challenge for the three, so much so that it felt like home after the Lost City of Tol'Vir experience. Even though the Temple Guardian Anhuur requires the flick of a switch - two in fact - it was clear from the first try that this boss was doable. The three stated almost in unison after the first wipe that this one is doable, when they were not in unison with the General Husam earlier, which tells quite a lot.

Temple Guardian Anhuur taught the Healer the first usable spot for the Leap of Faith (or HealGrip): as the Tank had flicked both of the switches, the Healer pulled him up with the Leap of Faith and the slaughter would commence. The point was that this provided the Healer a few moments to heal the Tank up before the damage started raining in and get his stuff on the roll before the snakes came into the show.

After four or five tries it was the Healer who got the honors in letting Temple Guardian Anhuur to rest: the Rogue and the Tank came to the conclusion that the Healer had let them die deliberately to get all the honor and recognition to himself. He even made the point to dance on the dead, mutilated bodies of his companions before resurrecting them. The disgrace!

Instead of taking the scenic route to the end, the threesome decided to take the long route instead and started their way to Earthrager Ptah. The road to good intentions - especially in Egyptian themed instance - is always paved with Scarabs, though.

But the way to Earthrager Ptah - the twin brother of ICC's Marrowgar - was easy enough to clear and fun to run around with the camels provided (tell me there isn't a grande reason to have them rideable over there, please!), and as much as we tried we couldn't make this boss feel as ominous as it should have felt.

Boy were we taken. By the hand, by the feet, by the platter and everything that hurts. The encounter is fun and furious, and it's sad how people just 'ignore' this encounter and go through only the mandatory ones.

It took the threesome around fifteen (15) tries, where in the middle of them the Tank had to go to Stormwind and replenish the potions and flasks, after which he learned a lesson, too. Somehow the Tank had missed the memo stating that the cooldown of a potion starts only after the combat ends, and thus he ended up being potionless in the end because he had popped a Earthly Potion (or whatever) in the beginning.

That resolved, the Earthrager Ptah went down on the third try after this revelation. This time the term 'close call' got a whole new meaning, even closer than the one experienced on Tempel Guardian Anhuur. You see, the damage over time effects left on Earthrager Ptah by the Tank and the Rogue killed the boss at the same second the Healer died. The tank followed the dropping health down from 80k to zero from the ground zero, telling the others the status of the boss as they were too busy in (I hoped to say killing the boss) staying alive.

But hey! Earthrager Ptah was put down by merciless effort and good spirits.

Now the question is why would the Threesome bother to take on so many wipes on this one, but gave up on the Lost City of Tol'Vir. The reason is simple: the Tol'Vir combats didn't show even a promise that something was changing from one wipe to another, while the Halls of Origination encounters showed clearly the difference in changed tactics. The effort - reward - ratio was right, and the encounters really responded to changed tactics.

By far this Earthrager Ptah fight has been the most fun I've had with my pants on in Cataclysm. Temple Guard Anhuur felt like a victory with capital v, but Ptah proved that we can change, adapt and persist.

What the Three Stooges wouldn't do for a few deserved - and poorly documented - deaths?

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Some thoughts on heroics

I've run a couple of heroics with my shadowpriest, and quite honestly it's been a shock to see how much harder they really are from the normals. Add to that the fact that I've been running in PUGs rather than guild runs (only one guild run), the statement that "pugs are the new heroic mode" really shines.

What I have noticed, though, is the tolerance to failure has changed from the Wrath. PUGs in which I have been have been extremely tolerable towards failure and first timer failures. Not saying that I have been faulty of them, but neither saying I haven't. The only kicks from the pugs I've seen so far have been due to someone disconnecting or going afk without a notice.

The difficulty made me think about the Three Stooges and our possibilities to go further on our quest to die undermanned in unimaginable ways in the dungeons where normal pugs go laughing. In Wrath we were in a blissful situation because our tank - which happens to be me - had geared up to raid level gear before we started on the ICC5 man instances. I was overgearing the content on regular basis and my survivability was above the norm back then, even though the rest of the holy trinity - healer and rogue - were not up to the same level.

Now the situation is already the other way around. The tank is the only one who hasn't gotten to level cap, and I sure as can be have no will to start pugging the instances to get geared up. So we go along and seem to have already struck the glass ceiling in the tanks survivability in the Lost City of Tol'Vir. I know there would be an easy remedy to that.

PUG as a tank.

In Wrath I did at least the daily PUG and one or two heroics a day. The instances were quick and - after the first run - passable in a PUG, let alone in a guild group. In Cataclysm... I do not even want to tank in a PUG, knowing how much love tanks get when something goes awry. Like Tobold posted sometime ago, the most stressful positions in a dungeon party are the tank and healer, who have to move and act while the ranged dps just stands in one select position throughout the combat.

How true it is, even in heroics.

The fact that a heroic takes almost double the time of a normal instance (not discussing about the threesome) makes the PUGging even less attractive, even with the additional bag of loot from Call to Arms. The stupid grind for reputation based gear enchantments makes the whole issue even more depressing, making me ask why the Wrath enchantments couldn't have been like heirloom, upgrading along with the level.

There would have been quite a few apparent gold sinks if Blizzard had utilized the upgrading enchantments a bit more. I would much rather fly through Northrend than kill bazillion monsters for a new reputation to be honest.

We'll see when the tank hits the cap. I guess it's time to start digging up those gearing guides.
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Asaad day

There they were: the foolish three who had once failed to conquer the Vortex Pinnacle. Facing the portal, feeling confident and willing to die for... the sake of dying.

Fast forward, with subtitles:
"If you just sap that one and I pull the rest... Oh, it can't be sapped, and omgwtf LET ME AT IT!"
"Could you use Fade or something, so I can keep the aggro?"
"Um, well, it might be better for my mana if I stopped doing damage to them, right?"
"Ok, I'll go and strangle that one, silencing it? Ah, for crying out loud, you pulled it already..."

The groups of different sizes of winds and clouds came and went, and the majority of the time my screen was like this:

Happily smashing away, from one pull to another. Ok, save the one time an exploding cloud warrior pushed me over the edge of the Pinnacle, but otherwise the trash mobs were pretty uneventful, as if someone had tweaked them - again! - to some lower level of challenge. This time the Grand Vizier left another man standing, and it wasn't the tank...

Bloody priest! He should keep the tank up rather than the rogue, as it was the tank who bit the dust first again.

No reason to cry over the spilled milk, though.

Jump to the next, the mid-boss Altairus was a nice, fast and simple fight, right after the fellowship thought out to use the wind to their benefit. Old hunter adage was proven correct: always stand downwind...

Finally it was time to face Asaad. The trash mobs of the Tol'Vir after the Grand Vizier were a sort of nice change to the pace, as our rogue could sap and control the excessive healers. Otherwise it was - like I commented in Twitter - "sap one, tank on rest, kill the second, wham-bang-slam-smash."

Now Asaad. That is one bugger of a boss. The stars around pounding extra damage to us all, with no way of putting them out of their misery, having to run from one Containment Field to another while tossing things to the Lord of Wind and Fury himself, the fight was actually very interesting. Thrice we fell, until...

The perfect performance.

In the end, all we could conclude was...

After which we searched for new challenges. I wonder if this is good enough?

Oh, by Golly!

The first fights in the Lost City of Tol'Vir were intense, interesting and way better than all the fights so far in Cataclysm, with several aspects to take into account. It is indicative that we didn't get the first boss - General Hasam -  down on the first run we were there, yet everyone of us felt that we were doing our best, with little to improve in our playing.

So off to the questing it is. Mind you that we cleared Vortex Pinnacle with tank and healer being at lv84 and 'just' the rogue at 85, and the healer dinged to cap while in the Lost City of Tol'Vir. More or less, it's down to gearing up from now.

It seems that the game just turned interesting, if the quality of the instances grows this rate from now on...

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Again three did the job of five

It's been a month since the Three Stooges (or Three Dunces) rode together. Calculating the /played over that time on these characters, the time is around half an hour a character.

No wonder the game felt clunky and jittery, as we soon found out...

The first set of characters was - in lack of better word - a mess. Of the five, three were running wild, one was being pounded by our 'overlevelled' rogue (Förgelös, 85) and the last one was being handled by our healing dps machine (Bishopgeorge, 84). So what the heck was the tank (Laiskajaakko, 84) doing?

Trying to get a hang of the buttons and binds. Removed from this set of skills and keybinds, succumbed to Rift with another set, had had it's cost on efficiency. Really, during the whole run I was fumbling with the buttons and at no point did I feel that the character was working as intended. Also, compared to the response and speed of Rift (or my spriest, for the matter), the response and cooldown time was absolutely horribly sluggish! I know I have mentioned it earlier how the queuing system for skills killed the responsiveness for me, but I never, ever thought it was really THIS bad. Push a button, once a second. The need for the skill passes by faster, so there is nothing you can do but to hope that you can still counter the attack by the skill needed. Oh, it passed and I launched a useless reflect, nice.

And so on.

Never the less, everyone of the three wondered if something had happened to the game, as the encounters seemed to last longer and the whole gameplay felt slow.

The mobs
We passed the trash in the traditional mess we like to do them. The tunnel between Corborus and Slabhide was amazing, as the annoying rock spider thingies just kept on spawning after a spawn. The flood of them was constant, not like the last times, obviously meant to keep us going. Otherwise the 'trash' was uneventfull till the end.

The bosses
Corborus, you dear ground worm you. How lackluster you are on the umpteenth time. One thing which has happened over the last month is that the DBM updates have made it impossible to miss the crystal barrage even on a team mate way over where.

Slabhide
This old, wary dragon just doesn't hold the magic anymore. The fight is furious and fun in it's own way ("Are you out of mana, yet?" - "Not just quite yet" - "HEAL!" - "Sorry, out of mana, try to hang on" - "YOU JUST SAID YOU WERE FINE" - "Sorry, can't help it" - "AAAARGHH!!!"), but still it's like wiping the stains off the window. No, not the way that they still are there after a while, but the way that it's easy to make the stains to go away. Really.

Ozruk, our earlier nemesis because the tank (that bugger) didn't understand the finesses of the fight. Well, didn't remember them the first time around this time, either. So yes, we wiped, gloriously, but the second run was flawless. Hit, bash, maim, mutilate - oh, ground smash - splash, boom, bang - oh, shatter RUN! - kill maim KILL!! In a way, I like this encounter for it's simplicity but still requiring solid concentration.

High Priestess Azil
Grande biatch of the highest order. We came, were cautious and ... wiped. The void zones just kept spawning so that the second or third wave of the adds just didn't catch them. So we had two dozens of those pesky worshippers pounding on us, add a few criticals from them and down we went. But the second time over was lovely. Bishopgeorge learned to dance the tune, Förgelös just kept on hopping and jumping from the voids and I... I tried my darnest to keep the adds from Bishop and in the voids.

Down she went and all we got was this lousy achievement.

"What shall we do next?" -
"Conquer the World! Let's try Vortex Pinnacle?"
"Isn't that supposed to be extremely hard?"
"Aren't they all?"
"Ah, ok, let's go."

So off we went to Uldum and Vortex Pinnacle, first visiting some sort of repair shop. The overall monetary stuff on Laiskajaakko ended being negative, repairs costing more than the quests and loot could make. I guess that's because Laiskajaakko is in his early 84s, as Förgelös (that overlevelled bastard rogue) claimed to have made over 250g over the night...

Anyhow, the night was turning late when we started. The first group of five mobs proved to be a challenge: not a huge one, but a challenge for a change. The Wild Winds seem to be the buggers of this place, annoying casters who shake the stuns off of them in record time.

And they cannot be sapped, which crippled our secret weapon!

Another problematic trash mob was the Cloud Princes, as they summon immediately and uninterruptably three Wind Gusts or something. So a nice trash group of two mobs turns into a foray of six, all hitting at an unimaginable rate.

Still, long story short.

We.
Killed.
Grand Vizier Ertan.

On our first visit, on our first try.

That was just the halfway spot, but still. Three did the job of five.

Again.
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I doubt that's a good idea

This is not a Gnomore post. Gnomore is on vacation for this week due to Rift head start weekend.

This is a Rift post. Due to Gnomore being on vacation because of the Rift head start weekend.

Onwards.

So far I've been playing only one character, Kelari Mage called Copraf (ingenious naming, don't you agree?). The term "glass cannon" is an over estimation of Rift Mages survival abilities, but at least at the low levels the damage I can deal is quite enough to keep single mobs a couple of levels higher at bay. Even as much as to get them down before they can even hit me.

What can I say? Argent, the RP server I'm located with this character, is a very helpful and nice community. There have been no queues as far as I've seen, and the overall attitude is the we are in this together. The most bothersome thing about the game is its namesake, the rifts: it seems to me that there are invasions and rift events going on constantly when I'm online, making it nearly impossible to level up by the normal questing way. I'm overlevelling the content here, people!

As the explorer me, I had to take a breath of fresh air in Sunday and I ventured off the beaten path of Freemarch (the level 5-20 area). Strolling around in Droughtlands (level 22+) and later in Shimmersand (at least lv33+!) with a level 14 character was a stressful, exhilarating and very much refreshing experience! As every step had to be thought out in advance to stay alive, the intensity of that session was very, very high. And I really mean that you had to plan your steps ahead, because the nearest resurrection point was always at the other end of the map if you were lucky: the corpse run wasn't as nice as it may sound.

Anyhow, seeing the depth of detail put into these areas and the love in the graphics has convinced me even more that there is no hurry to level up. There is quite enough to explore on the way up, and the lore and legends which I encountered on those travels are quite promising. Like the separation of two Cyclops tribes after they were freed from the ilk of the evil Eth, who had brought them through dimensions by magic to serve as slaves and gladiators... How the heck has all that happened and what is going on in the cave there?!

In Shimmersand there are some nice triggered events which left me giggle: I won't go any deeper into this, because they are somewhat a surprise and I would surely spoil the fun from someone entering them for the first time. Needles to say, I'm waiting to come back with a proper level character and see how the events proceed then.

I have only one thing to complain about in the Rift events and public groups. There seem to be no interest to heal in them. As a pure dps I have no way to keep my health up, while the dps from Druid persuasion toss a self heal every now and then and keep pounding. The elite invader as much as breathes to my general direction and I'm gasping for a potion to stay in the foray.

Sad to say, but this was to be expected: everyone wants to beat the baddies, and as the system rates everyones personal performance, healing isn't going to be rated too high by the players. It's a war out there, anyhow, no time for losers! (I should have rolled a pure healing cleric and level only by quests and healing... no, too much Gnomore!)

The best part was yesterday: guild fun in Iron Tombs.

First of all, the game is gorgeous. But the instance itself rises the bar even higher: it is dumbfounding. The atmosphere, lighting and sounds are just magnificent and just ... right in its grand meaning. Can't wait to run the instance again, even though the initial amazement has vaned.

The structure and flow of the run is well thought. Like I said during the run, Trion has truly delivered the fun they promised to include in the game. Even though our rag tag group had one 'overlevelled' character, the rest at level 18 and my meager lv15 had quite enough to do and the challenge was to plan the pulls and kills after the first - and only - wipe after a specialist pull gone somewhat awry. Or how can you rate a pull for three mobs which ends up pulling thirteen, among which at least one mini-boss? Expert job, I say. Something I capped by stating the next proposed pull with "I doubt that's such a good idea".

The fun part of the run was that I really learned more about my Mage than I had learned before questing and rifting. I also found out later, when I was going through the run, the reason why it was so fun in many ways.

The main thing was the fact that there was no feeling of having to be the min-maxed super performer of the class. There was no need to show and tell how my class is played properly. And there was no expectations on anyone in the group that a certain class should perform at a certain level.

Here comes the only comparison to WoW in this post: in WoW I don't like the instances anymore because I have to be the best there is only to stay out of the name calling ring. Be it tank, healer or any dps, it is the same. The damage meters and the sour community does have its toll on the fun, really. Instead of going into an instance I have to think whether I have the gear to do it, the right spec to be accepted, the buffs I'm supposed to have. There is the feeling that the game and the rest of the group are expecting more than you can deliver.

Sure, there are players who don't give a damn about it and just go and get the bashing. But as a tank or a healer in WoW you are bound to get the shaft even if you perform well if someone decides the failure was your fault. Seen that on both my tank and my healer, and that's the major reason I don't want to tank in PUGs anymore.

It is not fun anymore, it's a chore.

Granted, the run in Rift was a guild run, but in a way it was a PUG: I'm a newcomer to the guild, the composition of the group came on the fly and we were just having a look into the instance. It had more common with a server PUG than a real planned guild run, really.

But the most fun came out of the fact that no-one really knew the instance, everyone was a gamer and had played quite a bit of MMOs and everyone was in to have FUN.

Anyhow, Rift is what I have earlier stated many times: WoW on steroids, Trion doing splendidly what Blizzard did way back when they launched WoW. It's new, familiar, simple to get a hang on, a new car with some new gadgets and better stuff under the hood.

For me the head start weekend - even though it was the worst gaming weekend I've ever had - was a great success on Rift point of view.

How about you? Have you tried Rift, will you give it a try or will you just pass it for something more shiny?

Or are you content enough with WoW?
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Stooges with a headache

Despite Tobold trying to explode my visitor counter, I will stick to the schedule I have now established on my mind.

Yesterday was yet another Three Stooges night. The holy trinity of warrior (lv83), priest (lv84) and rogue (lv84) entered Stonecore with all the confidence in the known world to overcome their nemesis from the earlier attempt: Ozruk. For the record, we still feel - even more so - that this instance is easy for a full group, let the composition of the group be anything. If we can do it with such an ease as far as we do, the a full group should just do it.

Corborus was really a pushover and Slabhide was just another boss dragon with it's own dance moves. In the end, the trash mobs provided more entertainment value due to their uncanny way of getting some adds to the fight. This one ability proved to be the one we couldn't later overcome.

But let's continue with the dungeon delving.

After Slabhide there comes the passage with the mobs and sentries. Nothing strange in there, kill the sentries as fast as possible or face the consequences: they call ALL the mobs to protect the High Priestess. Carefully we disabled the ones which might have caused any further trouble (or so we thought) and faced our nemesis.

We banged our head on this rocky fellow time and again. Running around like chicken in heat. Pulling those extra mobs while running from the Slabhide teleporter, the ones we thought wouldn't cause any trouble. And wiped once more.

Until this one particular warrior, Laiskajaakko (his player, in fact), suddenly had an realization that you do not have to run from the Ground Smash, just side step. So instead of running around from the Shatter Blow and Ground Smash, you have to pull away only from the first and NOT MOVE OZRUK.

Stupid player that guy. Heard he's writing a blog or something. Real git.

All this and some more, the next try resulted.

Yes, Ozruk was down. And the only reason it took us so long was this stupid tank person who couldn't read the signs and interpret the graphics on this fight.

On we went, through the meaningless bunch of the Cultists, until we met Her.

High Priestess Azil. The fight is really a simple one for a bigger group, as ranged dps can do her damage all the time. We - on the other hand - are lacking two dimensions of dps in our group: ranged and area. Both of which would be nice to have in this one, making life just a bit easier.

Needless to say, this fight is messy and not too satisfactory.

And the conclusion pretty clear.

In short: the Three stooges are lacking some serious damage dealing on Azil, and our tank has to learn more about grabbing the aggro from the healer. The major cause to the headache resulting wall banging was the fact that the healer was being pounded by the Cultists, while the tank was being Power Gripped and unable to say "Cheese!". The main reason for the frustration on High Priestess Azil encounter was the fact that no changes we made to our approach gave us any noticeable advance in the encounter: everything we did to change the result was in vain. On Ozruk we saw from the beginning the problems and could work on them, but here... nothing sticks. It just bugs the living daylights from us.

Like the song goes, she bangs, she bangs. But not for long, for as Förgelös (the rogue) said...

WE WILL OVERCOME, AZIL!
.

Stooged in Stonecore

Deepholm. Lovely scenery, interesting story and Stonecore.

Three Stooges had been warned about the instance time and again, that it will be the one that will challenge the group. Having only one level 84 (Bishopgeorge) and mostly in greens and select blues the trio embarked on the trip to the challenge land.

The initial shock was short and sharp. The rag-tag group of five turned into a mess of twelve, as everyone seemed to aggro everything. Score 1 for Stonecore and Millhouse the Mad Gnome.

But as accustomary, the Stooges learn from their mistakes. The next time wasn't as trivial, and as we started our slow trek into the depths of the Core, we noted the skills, damage and peculiarities of the mobs. Without hesitation - and needless dying - we encountered Corborus.

Believe or not, Corborus was a snack to our professional group, not even sweat broke on this first try. It was too easy, considering the level, we stated, not noticing the mockfull tone in our comments.

Onwards and deeper we went, and on to the Slabhide. Lovely dragon, who's breath is really, really bad. She should really make an appointment with a dentist and do something to her reflux problem.

As usual, our group of professionals couldn't find a proper - nor unanimous - way to conduct the battle.

This fight was interesting, not only because it had a lot going on simultaneously, nor because we took the spanking like three man do, but because as we returned to the instance, the encounter was locked. The impenetrable wall was blocking our way to Slabhide, who may as well be a he.

Out we went, repaired, reset the instance and in again. This time Corborus did a trick to us and emerged from the side of the cliff after his first dive and caused us some trouble.

And then the world fell apart. Three quarters of the WoW EU population were kicked out of the game, without the option to re-enter. That meant that our meager group was reduced to one, Laiskajaakko, while the two others were locked out of the game. As it happens, this affected the whole server and later I learned that it affected the whole EU area. Better part of the guild raid running at the same time was kicked out, and as Laiskajaakko took off to do some mining in the meanwhile, it seemed that a good part of the mobs were having a vacation, too.

Anyhow, the situation resumed later and we proceeded with Slabhide. She's a beauty in the end, as we found out.

Down and down we went, and met our next obstacle. Barrier. The wall to bang our heads on.

Ozruk.

We tried, we fought and we... failed.

One or two tries were very close, and it was just the final punch that was lacking. We were certain as we logged out, that we could do it, easily, given the difficulty so far. Remembering how Lady Naz'jar was our nemesis earlier, Ozruk will be done next time.

All in all, the Three Stooges are certain that the difficulty of the instances as such is too easy. If three can handle Stonecore on their first visit there ever like this, how can five fail?

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Wasted time and effort (yawp)

I have made a mistake. I have dipped my feet into the Grand Game.

I'm talking about the AH game, of course. It's available to all, each and everyone, it's just as equally mean and demanding to all and the success is totally depending on yourself and your understanding of the market. Information.

Last week I said that I found my initial dip kind of too easy. Considering I don't have a single capped crafting toon I still managed to reap about 10k profit over the week, mainly from the severely overpriced prime and major glyphs which still sold like Coca-Cola. Nice play, considering my inscription toon is capped at 375 and not coming up from there anytime soon.

Of course I had to plunge myself into the depths after that. I purchased the cards to build the Hurricane Deck (Darkmoon cards of the Winds persuasion, that is). The deck cost me - done this way from the cheapest cards in the market - some 17k, while they were sold at 24k. Nice, if that had only materialized: the price of the deck plummeted over the weekend down to 18k and AH has now quite a few of them on sale.

On the bright side, I'm almost back where I started, money wise, meaning that I have managed to do about 20k in a bit over a week. Last I checked I had done 40k sales, meaning that my profit-% is around 50%.

Not bad. We'll see where this takes us when I get my system running.

On the play side, my main toons have been frozen in time. Laiskajaakko is taken out of the naphtalene only for the Brothers, my spriest is working on tailoring and enchanting occasionally and DK is just sitting there, doing some jewelcrafting once in a while. The main toon I'm playing currently is my banker, a restoration druid who runs a random every now and then if time permits. (My typical AH run takes about a hour with checking mail, restocking, reposting and specified scanning).

Now to heal in the Outlands dungeons has become the 'favourite' pass time for this toon: maybe it's the effect of Gnomore, but I just cannot take on doing the killing quests with this one, either. The fighting part of most of the quests just puts me off and as a resto druid the options are pretty limited. I'm lazy, I don't want to change gear or spec to accommodate the questing, so I just hit the LFD button and wait for the group.

Glad to say, as a healer it is almost immediate, even in the levelling dungeons. It seems that even though the healer/hybrid classes are predominant in the groups, none of them are willing to make the switch either. Levelling as dps in questing is so much more convenient and faster than as a healer, so I fully understand them.

However, being a pure healer brings interesting discussions in groups. It's always the healer's fault when something bad happens, and it doesn't matter how you explain the thing. In this one PUG there was a pretty vocal warlock, who insisted on pulling mobs in chain: the tank pally was doing his best to contain the aggro and had something wrong in his set up. In short, it caused a wipe (Hellfire Citadel, the bigger area after the tunnel): he pulled the whole area, some 20 or so mobs and ran first out of line of sight, then out of my range. As the only heal I can cast while running is Rejuvenation, a weak HoT, it wasn't enough to contain the damage.

This warlock started on nagging on the healer (didn't even take time to write a name there), how druids are so OP at this level (62) in these dungeons and how the healer did a sucky job. In my polite manner I explained how I can't do a thing if I'm not in the range or if I'm forced to move, and told him to check the facts, STFU and concentrate on his dps.

What a change in tone. He didn't even mention healing after that, pointed out that the tank had wrong sigil (or whatever the paladins have) on and generally thanked the healer at the end. It seems no-one had said anything against him, ever, and the first time someone paid any attention was now as he was shown where he was standing.

Anyhow, levelling up through the LFD is very interesting. You really cannot regard the rest of the group as being even a lousy AI, and you really have to adapt to how the tank - dps co-operation plays. I don't remember ever having to take other players into account as much as tank or dps as I have to do as a healer, so while playing a healer while levelling is demanding, it's also the most interesting part for me.

Pretty nice counter activity to the static AH grind, really.

Gnomore got a few hours, too, mounting up to lv16. LFD opened up, but the main interest is in the mount at lv20. The Darkshore has changed all for the best, but as the final steps of the main quests require killing, they are left unfinished: also the easter egg for two achivements requires some slaughter, so the latter one remains un-earned. Which really pisses me off.

This for now. I'll keep my stocks up and may even tell about my AH stories.

C out
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Throne revisited

There they were again. The Three Stooges, in all their glory. Well, this time - again - in Stormwind, but dedicated to take on The Throne of the Tides again: this time the whole experience.

To get to the Vashj'ir - as well as any other Cataclysm high end area - is pretty easy. Just login, go to the island within Stormwind and pick your portal. WOOSH and you're there.

Except that when we are around, things are not exactly that simple. Oh, the WOOSH part was ok, we got to Vashj'ir area, but to get through the maelstrom in the Shimmering Expanse was another story. You see, we should have understood at that point that the game was somehow bugged. While Laiskajaakko, the tank and miner and bullsh blacksmith went around the area mining (it's amazing how empty Vashj'ir is nowadays, and how much there is to mine!), Förgelös was the first to enter the maelstrom...

"Wait! What?! I died!"

Silence.

"Yea, I died as I parked above that swirly-thingy. No reason!"

You must be kidding, bro.

"Wait. Killed by Exhaustion?!"

At this point Bishopgeorge tried to enter the maelstrom and noticed that a) he got the fatigue debuff and b) he didn't get in, right away at least. And concluded that you have to enter the darn thing exactly from the top of it, and smack in the middle, otherwise you get the fatigue debuff and - eventually - die.

I had to try it myself, and sure as hell, I was about to die before I got out of there and went for the white hole for entry. We then summoned the ill fated rogue among us, he would have gotten lost in the whirl otherwise...

The instance felt even easier than before. Main things that had changed were that we were all now level 83, so slightly on the high side for the normal levelling instance. But our undermanning tactic should have countered that. At the same time Förgelös had received some green rings (Alcite Band) and some other green crafted gear to compensate the outdated Northrend blues, still being below the gear score of the normal dungeon PUG you might find through the Dungeon Finder.

No, really. The trash felt almost as trashy as the ones in the WotLK instances. Crash in, trash them, move on. Very little need for any crowd control or care. The overall comment was that the instance felt sluggish and the characters abilities seemed to lack the punch they had a week ago.

This went on to Lady Naz'jar, whom we downed after several tries last time. This time - however - she went down on the first try and without breaking a sweat. Only one time pop of cooldowns from the tank, no real thing in there. Wo-hoot and rejoice.

Except that from this point things continued to go 'our' way.

The encounter didn't proc the conclusion and we couldn't initiate the cut scene nor open the gate to let us out. We tried this and that and some more, until we gave up and hearthed out. Only to find out that the instance was stuck in the moment and we had to reset it to proceed.

Rinse and repeat. This time it worked, we had not died once (to our surprise and disappointment) and we faced the Ulthok thingy.

All posh and full of ourselver we crashed in and...

Wiped. (Hooray, we died!)

It was a splash, bang, 50k+ in and out! We had gotten careless due to the instance being so easy till now. As we ran in and took Ulthok down without even blinking, we came painfully aware of the fact that the instance WAS too easy. To add to the injury, we killed Erunak's squid helm without a thought and helped Neptulon to defeat Ozumat, even though Förgelös decided to die and watch the fight from the other side of the gate again. Like I mentioned earlier, he has this cunning habit of giving the bosses some equal ground every now and then, and this time he decided to do this before the final of the instance.

His loss: as he was standing outside when Ozumat was vanguished, he didn't receive the achievement for the instance!

Due to the running from SW twice, we spent some time discussing how anti-climatic the finale of the instance was, very much a let down in both story and difficulty, and noting time and again that the instance was - in the end - very much too easy. Even though it's an entry instance for the WotLK skipping newcomers, it still doesn't pose any real challenge to a full group. Hecklers, if the three of us cleared the place in two tries, severely undermanned in the end, then a whole group should clear the place in their underwear!

To add insult to the injury, everyone else got a piece of gear or two except the tank, who is running around in WotLK purples and crafted Cataclysm greens. Which means that the gear composition of the group is pretty much in level with the required ones.

The decision was made to tackle Stonecore next. Let's see if we can two shot the first real instance.

I sincery hope not.

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When I get on a side tracked... (yawp)

What a weekend. Nothing I planned really happened, but a lot of other things did.

I planned on putting my main, warrior tank, on exp freeze and play through Mt.Hyjal and Vashj'ir, play some Gnomore to get him to LFD level range and do some crafting on my priest.

Did next to none of them.

Instead, for some curious reason, I played mostly with my banker (yikes!) as he was already in the level range for Blackrock extravaganza. The old raid instances have been 'lowered' to random 5 mans and Copramo spent most of the time in there, healing the heck out of ragtag groups, most of which didn't even know where they were. Heck, I didn't know most of the time, and as I mostly got picked up by a group which had lost their healer, I didn't even get the big picture of the place!

What was the most curious about this experience is something worth discussing about. Sure, all the high up "been-there-since-early-beta" people who have grinded (ground?) Blackrock as a raid instance way before Burning Crusade came out know the place like the bottoms of their (often forgotten) pockets. But there are an amazing number of players who have never, ever set their foot in the instances. And I mean ever. Myself included.

Especially Blackrock Depths is a dumbfounding whole as a 5 man instance: the LFD loading screen doesn't tell which part you should be doing. At one run it was just one boss (right,  from the start!), on another we had to plunge through majority of the map to get to the boss needed (another one!) and so on. I'm SO confused on which boss is the one the group should go and smack, and I'm definitely not the only one!

Blackrock Spire is almost as bad, except that there you have more linear approach. But... the LFD doesn't tell which one of the two you should go and complete! And you get quests for both from the questgiver conveniently inside the entrance - just in range of the first mobs, which is a bit of a design flaw in it's own.

It's nice they did this and 'force' the new players to go through the hellish depths of Blackrock Mountain while levelling, as the story will later on bring them back to Blackrock Caverns and all. But it would be nice to know which part or which bosses you are supposed to kill before you start: there was this one tank who said that he'd been in Blackrock for over two hours and he just wanted to finish the instance. He had had the whole group changed twice over and they hadn't found the boss they were supposed to kill for the dungeon to finish. Needles to say, we found it and one shotted it.

It was very nice, though, to find myself in the queue for the Burning Crusade instances at level 58 and after that one run (they were never this easy back when BC launched!!!) he was lv59. One to go and the sky is ours!

Of course, I had to dedicate some time to Gnomore, too. It takes about one hour for a level with this bugger, so the progress is very slow. It's especially rewarding, when you see a new character level from 5 to 15 in the same time it takes you from 11 to 13 yourself... and that newcomer has way better gear at that point.

C out
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The Three rode to... success?!

"What shall we do tonight, Brains?"
"The same as every night, Pinky. Conquer the world."

Not a very bad comparison there, really, when you think of the bottom line of Pinky and Brain versus The Three Stooges (in the sense discussed in this blog, aka. the adventures of three misguided brothers in WoW): both start with grandeur ideas of conquest and glory, only to fail miserably in trying.

Gee that sounds great condensed that way.

The start was similar last night. "What shall we do tonight?", a common question heard from three players. Not simultaneously, naturally, as we logged in at a bit different times and - naturally - didn't know someone had already gone there. After two different discussions we decided to take on the formerly impossible Blackrock Caverns.

All except Bishopgeorge being at lv82 (that bugger had dug himself to 83 via Archeology), we slightly over levelled the instance. Despite of that, we had visited the place only once and then resorted to the LFD to get us at least a feel of the place; an experiment that left us with very negative view of our possibilities to actually finish the instance at all. All those new - to us at least - mechanics and things left us a bit dumbfounded. The encounters include interesting and different mechanics than anything we've seen so far (except for Laiskajaakko with his 'extensive experience' in ICC raids...), so we felt a bit off to even be there.

First was Rom'Ogg the Bonecrusher. Had the Tank kept his cool, we wouldn't have pulled that fellow while cleaning the trash away from the area. To add to the pain, the darn shackles got somehow inside the mob itself, making it effectively impossible to target! Not even tabbing showed the shackles, so... Oh, we wiped.

The second try was perfect show of execution: Rom'Ogg went down even with one cultist picking on us on the run. "RAZZ SMASH!!"

I started to wonder what the heck had happened to the group when we cleaned the trash from Rom'Ogg to Corla: I could pull whole groups of four and they would go down without us even breaking a sweat? Was it really all about new daggers Förgelös had acquired the last time or what?

But Corla, Herald of Twilight, with her Evolution rays... Mind you, this is the second time we even visited the instance, and already the pressure was mounting. How to handle the two rays with three players so that we could a)tank, b)spank and c)heal effectively over the fight. The solution was to have Bishopgeorge on one ray, tank Laiskajaakko on the second and our resident town fool dps dance the night away backstabbing the Herald.

All fine and dandy, except for a slight bit of lack in communication, which lead to Evolution of Bishopgeorge, an immense damage spike on Förgelös and effective wipe as Laiskajaakko was swat on the floor.

Back to the execution part: everyone watch their own cooldowns and buffs, and not listen to anyone else giving any sort of comments on them.

Corla went down without the slightest problem.


There was silence.


Some more silence.

"Now that was awesome."

And the congratulations and comments started flowing. We downed Corla, Herald of Twilight on our third try as trio, on our second visit to the whole instance, without the help of any darn strategy guides!

Full of ourselves and Bishopgeorge grasping his new Baton we went on to Karsh Steelbender. The flame elementals were tricky due to the quicksilver adds they heat up, but nothing serious. As customary, you have to wipe to learn the basics, so we wiped on Karsh because one darn stupid tank didn't move him out of the flames promptly enough.

Like Corla, the second time was impeccable performance: like watching a movie. Quite astonishing.

The corehounds were just pushovers, really, nothing to comment, and we really descended hard on the Ascendant Lord Obsidius with his two adds and role switching.

We were exhausted, exhilariated, excited and really proud of ourselves. Three manned Blackrock Caverns on our second visit! We didn't manage that on Forge of Souls, despite the fact that it was more simple and straightforward, we had better gear related to the instance and we knew the instance better.

The conclusion was, that even though Blackrock Caverns has more interesting mechanics and a bit more demanding bosses, it was too easy for comfort.

So we had to take beating to get us back to the ground, and to the Throne of the Tides we went.

Oh, yes, that felt like home again: even trash requires some crowd control, which we are short of. And at least the initial boss, Lady Naz'jar, requires some increased dps to get through the adds in time before the fat lady sings again.

Needless to say, we wiped once and again and after the third time we decided it was time to rest and reconcile what we had learned.

All in all, a fantastic evening, loads of laughs and glorious "WTF just killed us all?! 30k OVERKILL?!" moments. Something to forget before we ride again.

Seriously.

C out

PS. Just a thought: if we three man the instances and are in a same guild, shouldn't the run be a full guild run?
.

Power of words

There has been quite a few posts about how PUGs suck, how there is animosity towards tanks and healers and how people are just jerks in PUGs in general. In my current craving for positive things around me in life I decided to look at this thing the other way around.

As we are all responsible for the atmosphere of a PUG, the question really is...

How to improve the PUG from the inside?

As it happens, I got the best possible experience on this yesterday. My main idea was to jump in to my AH banker and check the mail, get some Archeology on him and log off. Out of habit - or just for the heck of it - I punched the character en queue for a random: as he was at level 54, the wait could have been around 20 minutes on the server I'm on.

No such luck. Didn't even get to Ironforge IP before the Random Group was ready.

Off to the Sunken Temple, the shortened, pitiful, run around version of the former Temple of Atal'Hakkar. Sure, most of the people hate it, but I found the maze-like structure fun and in it's own way demanding place. It was one of the first instances we cleared as Three Stooges, so that may have something for the place...

Never the less, I was summoned as the replacement healer, and the group was performing quite decently. The tank was a selfish bugger, not really suitable to tank at all. Told that he was a newbie tank, but went on like on steroids. Despite of this,, One by two we cleared the bosses, and as you may know the hall where Jamaal resides is full of those nasty undead trolls who turn into ghosts who happen to love the healer. And that the casters in there just happen to shoot fear around, usually causing major aggro chaos and huge add pulls.

Well, long story short, that all happened on the last three groups, until which I kept everything under control very nicely. (I can brag from time to time, right?) That was until a) fear hit our rogue DPS, who b) ran into another group, which c) for some reason took it on the healer, me. Talk about crud hitting the proverbial fan.

There I was, mana depleted, with caster and couple hunters hitting me, tank very much involved in gathering the mobs he could and losing health in alarming rate. I did my best to stick to the tank, hoping to hit Swiftmend (proccing Effloresence) and hoping that the tank would pick up the aggro.

It all failed, naturally.

Just when I was about to call it a day, I got a heal. And another.

The other druid in the group had dropped out of feral and brought me up to the land of living! The day, and the encounter was saved only by the mutual co-operation of the druid kind.

After Jamaal was down I generously thanked the feral feller and made him to the top of my heal list. Screw the tank, this guy saved my life!

As I got out of there, I punched the LFD on again. This time I got to flight before the group was there: it seems that the second wave of alts is just up in the last levels before Outlands.

Blackrock.

As you may know by now, that you can run parts of Blackrock as whole 5 man instances. It's been split into smaller runs than earlier, but this group... it seemed they wanted to have it all. The tank was obviously from a PvP server, hopping and jumping and delivering serious damage on the way. She was easy to heal, though, as she kept her self heals on pretty constantly.

It was a run from one mob to another in a speed I have never seen before. Chain pulling would be belittling the whole run, it was one constant fluid motion. After a couple of tricky, and almost lethal, pulls the tank stopped for a moment and said in /party

"Awesome healer is awesome."

That was all. Only smilies from the rest of the party, and me blushing at my keyboard. Why, I hadn't done anything any healer wouldn't have done. But from that moment on, that tank was my aim, focus point and devotion. I followed her like a puppy, and the only time I didn't we wiped, even though there were two priests and a shaman in the group!

At one point I even had to run back to save one of the priests and the shaman from mobs in the Lycaeum, where the iron dwarves come in lots and are normal: they just were cut off from us in the frantic race the tank kept on.

Conclusion
Few nice words work better than cussing and calling. If the tank or healer isn't doing en par your expectations, praise one of the dps or the other one (tank/healer). Bring positive words into the meddle and see the whole group gather more strength from it. Forget the one calling, cussing and making jerk of him/herself. Unless of course, that one is acting really destructively and causing the group to stall...

It's easy to go down to the level of "OMGWTFNWB", which is usually very destructive. Make a point of splendid use of CC, nice DPS, great heals or perfect pulls and use the power of the positive.

You may be surprised.

C out
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Three against... What?!

It was the night before New Year's Eve, when the Three Stooges took off again. With some fuzz with the contents of their bags they rummaged through the auction houses, banks, inns and stores of Stormwind, weeping for their trusty Northrend purples which had gone stale with the new, shiny greens of Cataclysm.

With much rage and crying they set their foot in Blackrock Caverns, the place they so fittingly died in the last time they were around.

"Off we go", claimed Laiskajaakko, as he entered the Cavern with Bishopgeorge. Without much ado he launched to the first caster mob, unaware of the fact that his brother had just exited the instance to show Förgelös, the middle one, where the Caverns entrance is.

Score: 1-0 for the instance.

Much rage and laughter commenced, as the three of them proceeded the instance. The first 'boss' with his lovely chains of appreciation caused the second death in the trio, when Bishopgeorge - instead of running straight - decided to run in circles around the feller. In the end, Laiskajaakko had only ten or so hit points left when the big bad boss went down, with all the cooldowns gone and potions chugged.

Score: 2-1 for the instance.

Onwards behind the shoulders of Raz the Insane or whatever his nickname was, and down the tunnel to Corla, that damned priest of the dark forces. The encounter is definitely done to humiliate us who want to have a real challenge in the instance, because it's quite impossible to complete at this level, with the dps available to the gear available. There just isn't enough dps to kill the beast beauty with the standard combination of the holy trinity: tank - dps - healer. I say standard, because none of us is a hybrid, nor do we have any pets to play with, pets which most of the time bring another party member to the foray, really.

Naturally it was a wipe. Twice even, even though we tried to rotate the one standing in the light ("Don't look into the light!").

Score: 8-1 for the instance.

"The heck with it", decided Bishopgeorge, and as the group leader put us into the LFD. Which, amazingly enough, filled the group before we got back from the spirit healer. (Ok, well, almost.)

And the instance was a breeze. The only problem was the fact that Laiskajaakko had never been in the instance before, so every boss was a new experience. There were wipes and deaths, but in the end the final verdict was that the instance was easy but designed so that it would be a real challenge for the three of us at anytime soon.

Score: 20 - 6, for the instance.

After which it was time to recuperate in the gentle care of Stormwind. Over the instance run there was next to no chat, no help, no advice from the two extra members, even though they had been in there several times. Laiskajaakko had to ask for guidance in Corla (ok, so the debuff's wear off, thank you) and that furnace master feller (now I know I have to drag him through the lava, thank you for telling that to me after the first wipe even though I asked). Without the constant chit-chat over the vent among the three of us, the instance experience would have been very, very shallow and dry.

Due to the fact that you have to know where the entrance is, the three decided that it was time for Bishopgeorge and Förgelös to gain their Sea Legs and Sea Horse. They went for the boat, stood on the same pier, but couldn't see each other: the glorious side effect of the phasing system. Upon reaching Vashj'ir the two landlubbers started doing the quests as planned, while Laiskajaakko did some mining and monster bashing, granting the two 'off-phased' brothers some extra experience. Which was nice and everyone was joyous.

Long story short, the three rode into the Throne of the Tides and engaged the first boss in there. That Nazga or what her name is. Anyhow, we got our behinds handed to us in a very grand and typical manner, as Bishopgeorge missed the healing que while yawning loudly, wiping first Laiskajaakko (Heals, please, Hello!) then Förgelös (Could we really have some heals here, please?!) in rapid succession. The only excuse was... "hmmmh... aye, that was partly the fault of the player, partly... hmmh..."

So we called it a night.

Förgelös put it nicely, and I have to agree with him on every word. You see, he said: "Despite everything Copra/Laiskajaakko claims and writes in his blog, one has to admit that the developers at Blizzard have really put some effort to the new areas and instances. So much so that you can really see that the polish isn't just skin deep."

Like I said, agreed. And I have never denied that WoW is extremely well done, polished and completed with great care.

It's good to end the blogging year with these warm words and wish all of you readers a very nice New Year.

C out
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I don't have the guts

Christmas came and went: now we're trying to suffer the rest of the fabulous food that we just couldn't eat up. Oh, yes, and I'm back at work, filing things.

The little time I spent playing went to doing some secondary things, like working on AH, starting a non-violent pacifist gnome priest and levelling some unnecessary tradeskills on my secondary toon, my spriest. I have been deliberately avoiding taking my warrior out of the closet, because I am confused, scared and mixed up with the tanking in the new instances.

I just do not have the guts to take up on a PUG to run the instances.

The reason is the same as it was with the WotLK endgame instances and taking up on raiding: I fear that I'm not good enough to do it and that I ruin the evening - or the instance - for the rest of the group whom I will never meet again.

The change in the way how tanking goes changed quite a bit, at least in my book. The last few heroics after the Shattering (before Cataclysm hit) really showed me that I just couldn't handle several rampant mobs at a time: to let one pass is two misses too many for me. When I'm tanking I want to have things under control, and nothing should go past my presence. "Thou shall not pass!"

But... the run with the Stooges and my two PUG's with my shadow priests showed me that even though the instances are pretty simple - especially the trash mobs - I can't expect to keep all the threat on me all the time. Blackrock Caverns was pretty simple but the Three Stooges will have hard time with the encounters later on where one has to be tied to the beam, you know what I mean. But as a tank in a PUG... not my bowl of porridge. Throne of the Tides is even worse, as some of the boss encounters evolve around the idea of multiple mobs spawning around the area: the group - which was two-three levels higher than my spriest, but I still scored the second highest dps... - wiped twice due to mismanaged aggro and lack of attention from the druid tank. Knowing the lack of area threat generation of a protection warrior, I can't see myself enjoying the red Threat Plates on my screen alongside the screams of agony from the group members. And accusations after that.

Oh, I know. There is this group of people who say that because you are in a guild you shouldn't have to PUG at all. Sadly the majority - read all - of the active guild are at the cap already, running heroic modes: knowing how nice it was to go through the same instance time and again, there is bound to be next to no interest to return to the normals after gaining the option to run a heroic. I'm assuming this and I doubt I'm too much off with this.

So, I'll just level up by questing which is nice. With the current rate of advancement I'll be off the boat once again.

Only because I don't have the guts to ruin others day by messing around in my tanking.

C out
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Three rode to Mt. Hyjal and found themselves in Blackrock Mountain

Oh, well. Back to business. The three stooges nights are the highlights of my WoW playing, definitely, even though last week started to look like something that was not too appealing. Questing among thousand others, trying to steal kills and bosses and just trying to be the fastest in a mini-instance - or elemental realm or whatever they are - to get the quests done.

Last night started as one such thing. Questing among not-so-friendly competitors. The darn hurry rubs on very fast, especially after you try to kill ten foozles and notice that someone picks them up with a dot just before you charge into them.

I was ready to kill after two such quests. Add to that the fact that at least three Obsidian nodes were stolen from me as I was fighting the mob guarding it.

Then we got to the same mini-instance and the recognition was immediate. The instance was a tribute to ancient game called Joust, with wing flapping and awkward 3d movement with a bird that really couldn't decide whether it was a brick or a sparrow.

It took a while to get the hang of the controls, but in the end it was pretty fun, actually. Though I still think that Joust was much better in it's 2d design than this 3d version of it. Still it was a nice tribute to one of the old arcade games.

At which point Förgelös, our resident rogue, started pestering us with the quest to enter the Blackrock Spire. Heedless to that we plunged into the questlines involving the Inferno area, and soon noticed that all three of us were cursing the quests to kill, collect and escort small furry things from the blazing Inferno to safety. Grumbling and mumbling filled our Vent channel as we worked to finish the hippie themed quests of the area: the only one which was fun was the last one, in which you saved bear cubbies by tossing them down from trees to a trampoline... go figure!

And off we went to the Blackrock. After some misplaced hearths and travelling, we found the new instance. Without much thinking we plunged in, head first as usual, not noticing that it really WAS an instance.

Few seconds later all toons were dead and three of us laughing the earlier frustration off.

After almost completing the instance we came to the conclusion that this was what we needed: to be against unbearable odds, chain-dying in places where everyone went dancing through. Not the over-dumbed down quest chains which were way too easy and simple even compared to the ones presented in the beginning of Northrend area.

Short note on the warrior side: you can say anything about levelling as protection, but the fact is that it hasn't gotten any better. I switched to the arms spec I had without changing any gear and I killed mobs in half the time. The only difference was that in protection I didn't get any damage from normal equal level mobs, but then again, who would bother? With arms I was running from a mob to another, combat healing on the run.

And the gear is clearly aimed for the dps side of the specs. Already replaced my chest and shield with way better greens than what I had in IC purple. Gearwise Förgelös was the lucky-duck in the group: everything changed from the earlier and he is now the one with the highest gear score of the group.

With new daggers and all.

The night was a success. The Three Stooges are riding again.

C out

Are there really so many paladins in the game?

The question posed in the title is the final thought of our three man evening. All the loot were either cloth or plate with intelligence or spellpower in them. The weapon drops were either caster weapons (staffs and an odd dagger with spellpower) or with intelligence. Are there really so many paladins in the game that IC 5 man instances have to feed them all the gear there is?

Taking into account that our Three Stooges is the holy trinity at the most basic: warrior tank, rogue dps and priest healer, we saw only one or two pieces which would have even been feasible for us to use. Except our priest who overgeared all the drops even remotely usable.

Short rewind.

The evening was amazing in many ways. First of all, we were all online in time. In fact, we were a bit ahead of the normal undecided timeframe. Second, we played very, very poorly. And third, if our priest has had an uncanny way of disconnecting at a critical moment, last night that went into ridiculous amounts.

We skipped the heroic from the start and went directly to IC: Forge of Souls was our first aim, as we had plenty of time then. One shot, no real problems except Bishopgeorge disconnecting on trash mobs twice, freezing on Brohnjam and looting while tank and dps were having fun. Revenge is sweet, as we will learn later on.

Pit of Saron proved what I stated earlier: we played poorly. First of all, we decided not to pull the wandering mob from the beginning and I launched my attack on the skeleton constructs, pulling them further into the instance. In a short while I noticed that we had company, as a group of smaller skeletons plunged on me: Bishopgeorge had stood on the higher platform just a tiny bit too far and pulled the whole group we had decided not to pull.

You can imagine the name calling, brotherly picking and jesting about slow priests which ensued...

But that's not all, mind you.

Garfrost was a pushover, Krick/Ick as well. But the incline from the latter up to the tunnel seems to be our worst enemy: this time we rode as one group, stopped at the higher platform and it was my turn to make the mistake to go just a bit too far: I pulled the first skelton group before others were ready. Everything was fine, as Bishop had full mana, and off we went. Until our resident -evil- rogue went a bit too far behind the group and pulled the next one.

Death and destruction, and off we went to fly the goose. I mean, how come Blizzard hasn't fixed the ghost mode griffins yet? Instead of being the superfast griffin express, its the wounded overweight goose trying to carry the passenger back to blood and tears...

The new try was easy peasy and next time we won't be skipping the mobs in the incline. No need, as we fell them even by making incredible plunders and mistakes (no one is innocent, mind you!).

Tyrannus. Our old arch nemesis. He's our puppy now, as long as a)everyone takes notice of the Overlords Brand, b)DPS stays out of the way of Forceful Smash and c)healer stays online till the fight is over, or almost over. All of the three happened, and not in any particular succession. We got him on the third try, after trying new spectacular ways of dying.

But we made it squeaky clean to Halls of Reflection!

Falric and Marwyn are a joke, really, if you think that we as trio can do them without a problem. Granted, it's still normal and all. Kill sequence in the mob waves established as

Priest > Mage > Shadow Mercenary > Sharpshooter > Others

and it worked. However, Bishopgeorge took care of providing us with extra suspense in the fight by disconnecting, freezing and looting while others were fighting to such an extent that Förgelös and I came up with a solution (which came our motto of the evening):

First we kill the priest and then we start the party.

You see, this went on in the escape from the Lich King gauntlet. Our first try was a prime example of this. We started it as usual, killed the first zombies quite ok. Bishop had been acting wonky from the start, not quite disconnected but jumping back suddenly due to lag or something like that. As Förge and I were fighting the Zombie Shaman, Bishopgeorge started running towards Lich King!

Death, destruction, kill, wipe. "Bishopgeorge has disconnected."

Nice.

The next try. Everything goes well until the second ice wall, we kill everything in more or less in time, and in the middle of the heated fight Bishop starts to laugh uncontrollably, frozen in the middle of the mobs.

His mouse had died, battery depleted.

Death, destruction, wipe. "Bishopgeorge has disconnected."

Third time was just poor playing, as Förgelös decided to go to Lich King and save his strength.

After this we decided to give up and went through the LFD HoR. Heroic proved to be impossible due to Bishop disconnecting three times before we even got to Marwen.

Normal was a faceroller, even though the group had three warriors, priest and rogue. The two warriors were both Fury, dual-wielding 2-hand axes and spreading devastation way more than required.

All in all, not a total failure of an evening for the Three Stooges, but interesting questions remained.

First we kill the priest from now on, and start having fun as tank and DPS. That's for sure.

C out
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