by Copra
Oh, what a wonderful toy this LFD thingy is! Oh what wonderful magic it weaves and what stories and tragedies it generates!
To begin with, I posed the question why my protection warrior hadn't ever been in LFD PUG for heroic FoS or PoS on twitter the other day. Almost a consensus of comments was that his gear isn't good enough, as the LFD system ranks the toons according to the gear level they have. Much like Gearscore, but with unknown variables.
Let me say that my experience with my shadowpriest proves that point of view wrong.
You see, my spriest was in heroic Forge of Souls which was continued to heroic Pit of Saron last weekend, and that was through LFD tool. Her gear was still 3/4 blues, whereas my protection warrior's gear is all purple and he has that second gear quality achievement (not Superior as that's iLvl 187, but at least the next one I think). Yet he has never been in there through the LFD.
That trip was quite something in all, and I surprised myself by having the average DPS of 2k+ on that run. First time in an instance, that is, and all I can say is that it was quite satisfying. The PoS run was pretty strange, though: our tank was changed three times, not by kicking but by the tanks leaving. We wiped only once the whole way through, and made Tyrannus kneel, too.
The doorway to HoR has become too familiar to me on both of my capped toons. Neither has passed that point so far.
The other curious incident happened last night. I went for a PUG run and got into Halls of Stone. Before the first pull the dps DK asked for another instance. Like what? "Could we do another one, as I don't know this", was his tell.
No one responded, the bear tank -who was excellent- made the first pull and ... the LFD was locked. The DK kept on trying to get to another instance until another player noted him that "someone is under instance lock currently" was showing and we should proceed. Only after some whining comments the truth came out.
"This instace takes too long."
Like hell it does. Granted, it's not as quick as some others, but it's still fast enough not to spoil the evening. In the minimum you get 4 emblems for the run and with tank like that it was a breeze. My spriest even got the Brann's Spanking New achievement, which means that the mid run 'boss' did actually go pretty well.
Still, the whiney DK left the group after that.
This rises the question: why the hell are people playing the game? To get as many emblems in as short time as possible? Or to learn to play their characters better and really master their class when they start raiding?
Or are they really so confident on their own performance that they don't care and think that failures are the fault of others than themself?
You see, that DK... his GS was way higher than my spriests who's gs is higher than Förgelös', but his dps and damage done on that Iron Council encounter was below us both. He had ran some ICC for the gear, but he really, really didn't know how to dps with that class.
And I admit: I'm only starting to learn mine.
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Monday, July 5, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Three against the Pit of Saron
by Copra
The Three Stooges took up where they left last week: Ick&Krick in Pit of Saron. The fact is, that this fight is the training ground in movement and avoiding goo on the ground. The whole Pit is, actually, when you thing Garfrost with his Saronite Boulders and later the Scourgelord Tyrannus with the ice patches.
But now I'm going ahead of myself.
Garfrost was a kitten to our trio this time. Our biggest challenge over the whole play session was the uncanny ability of Bishopgeorge to dc without a notice, a trait which caused the most of our expertise to shine. To die spectacularily, that is.
So we couldn't do a thing with Ick/Krick last time we were around. But because the instance had been so much fun and was really the only way for Förgelös, Bishopgeorge and Laiskajaakko to advance towards the Icecrown Citadel in any ways, we were determined that we would get past that boss. Even if it took hours to suffocate them under our own dead bodies we would do it.
With each try we learned a lot. When to move, how to hit and when to charge. Förgelös found several new ways to keep his poisons on the monster over the explosions and chases, while I got the best of the movement and hittin at the same time: strafing is your friend as a tank.
It took us five tries to find the perfection, and down he went. Ok, a couple of more due to the disappearing priest, but five full tries. One of which was a reset because Laiskajaakko went too far and another because Bishopgeorge ran too far while being chased. The reason to the avoidance was that our damage dealer, mr. Mutilate, Förgelös, had found the end of his road in a pool of toxic waste. Or something.
The transition mobs to the tunnel were a crappy bunch. Three casters and inadequate dps to down anything within reasonable time took its toll, but we got there.
Scourgelord Tyrannus.
I'm starting to hate that guy. It became obvious pretty fast that we couldn't beat the enrage. After that point the blows were over 20k a piece and none of us could take that kind of punishment. We need more dps, straight direct damage.
That's where we left it. We will overcome that snob, I'm sure of that.
To add to my earlier post, we are undergeared for PUGs. Laiskajaakko being the highest in gs (4.9k), Förgelös lowest (around 4k after the gear from the run), we are below the 5.6-5.8 requirement in the PUGs currently. I checked several PUG calls from VoA to RS to ICC10, all stating the same range.
Here comes the "but" in this case: we are bloody dedicated and we know quite a bit about our classes. We play seriously but with a grin. Still we're out of the raiding because we haven't raided ever.
To me it seems that without any incentives to mentor new people to raids the future guild perks will only make the separation between raiders and casuals bigger. Guilds require people to create guild exp and gold, which the raiders will use to their best. There will be the raiders and the cattle, unless the system changes somehow.
That's what I'm afraid of.
.
.
The Three Stooges took up where they left last week: Ick&Krick in Pit of Saron. The fact is, that this fight is the training ground in movement and avoiding goo on the ground. The whole Pit is, actually, when you thing Garfrost with his Saronite Boulders and later the Scourgelord Tyrannus with the ice patches.
But now I'm going ahead of myself.
Garfrost was a kitten to our trio this time. Our biggest challenge over the whole play session was the uncanny ability of Bishopgeorge to dc without a notice, a trait which caused the most of our expertise to shine. To die spectacularily, that is.
So we couldn't do a thing with Ick/Krick last time we were around. But because the instance had been so much fun and was really the only way for Förgelös, Bishopgeorge and Laiskajaakko to advance towards the Icecrown Citadel in any ways, we were determined that we would get past that boss. Even if it took hours to suffocate them under our own dead bodies we would do it.
With each try we learned a lot. When to move, how to hit and when to charge. Förgelös found several new ways to keep his poisons on the monster over the explosions and chases, while I got the best of the movement and hittin at the same time: strafing is your friend as a tank.
It took us five tries to find the perfection, and down he went. Ok, a couple of more due to the disappearing priest, but five full tries. One of which was a reset because Laiskajaakko went too far and another because Bishopgeorge ran too far while being chased. The reason to the avoidance was that our damage dealer, mr. Mutilate, Förgelös, had found the end of his road in a pool of toxic waste. Or something.
The transition mobs to the tunnel were a crappy bunch. Three casters and inadequate dps to down anything within reasonable time took its toll, but we got there.
Scourgelord Tyrannus.
I'm starting to hate that guy. It became obvious pretty fast that we couldn't beat the enrage. After that point the blows were over 20k a piece and none of us could take that kind of punishment. We need more dps, straight direct damage.
That's where we left it. We will overcome that snob, I'm sure of that.
To add to my earlier post, we are undergeared for PUGs. Laiskajaakko being the highest in gs (4.9k), Förgelös lowest (around 4k after the gear from the run), we are below the 5.6-5.8 requirement in the PUGs currently. I checked several PUG calls from VoA to RS to ICC10, all stating the same range.
Here comes the "but" in this case: we are bloody dedicated and we know quite a bit about our classes. We play seriously but with a grin. Still we're out of the raiding because we haven't raided ever.
To me it seems that without any incentives to mentor new people to raids the future guild perks will only make the separation between raiders and casuals bigger. Guilds require people to create guild exp and gold, which the raiders will use to their best. There will be the raiders and the cattle, unless the system changes somehow.
That's what I'm afraid of.
.
.
Real Performance Issue
by Copra
Gearscore should be used only as a tool, mostly to see how you perform yourself. It's a bloody arbitrary and secondary value which has no real connection to the actual skill of the player or the performance of the toon in the PUG. A player with high GS may actually be the slacker in the group, while the one with the lowest GS - and lowest gear - may well be over-performing on their own. Sadly the one doing their best always get the stick because their numbers don't come out as good as the slacking high geared ones.
The real performance issue is within the mind of those who do not understand the basics.
I hate the whole concept of Gearscore being the evaluation point of the players skill and ability to play his/her toon. The whole Gearscore adoration cult makes me feel sick and the calls in the trade channel make me wince mostly because the arbitrary number requirements do not make any sense. "LFM ICC10, 5.8kGS must, 11/12 achievement. /w me for inspection." is the epitome of this dumbass mentality.
However, enlightened from Bishopgeorge's experience with Gearscore/Recount, I installed GS myself. Now my recount shows also the performance per gearscore (calculates DPS/GS, giving a single numeric ratio of performance, normalised). And that makes me laugh time and again.
You see, it becomes even more apparent that the arbitrary GS number doesn't tell anything about the skill or the abilities of the character. Or player more like.
In levelling dungeons it's clear that the toons with heirloom gear are rerolled alts, and they most probably are playing another class than their main is. Fair enough. This means that they should learn the basics and the finesses of their alts class as well as their mains to be able to perform at the same level, right? And their GS should reflect this skill and knowledge, right?
This isn't true as often as you would like.
Now I have been struggling with the DPS of Pupunen all the time. Ever since I broke from the healing to shadow. Now I barely break the 1.7k in the instances. I can barely make 2.1k on dummy. With the gear I have on me, naturally.
The funny part is the fact that during the last few levels of levelling and instances, I still managed to be in the middle class in dps. I had few blues, mainly crafted and good enchants on them (Pupunen is tailor/enchanter, capped on latter). But only after installing that gs addon I found out that when the gear score value was taken into the account, Pupunen was overperforming the rest of the dps.
Every.
Single.
Time.
When I capped with her, I took on heroics right away. I thought I would be mopped around in DPS with all the 4k+ gs toons running gogogo in the instances.
I was wrong.
Pupunen wasn't even lowest in the normal DPS in the first few runs. In gs normalised dps she was on the top of the list almost every time, even with people geared in 5.4k gear. I was keeping 4.8k gs hunters below me in dps in Gun'Drak.
Here comes the revelation.
Her GS was below 3k.
The first heroic she ran she had 2728 gs. The next lowest player had 3.8k. The highest -who was the tank- had 5.8k. The tank was the only one higher than Pupunen in normalised dps. Heck, he was the highest overall in everything, but that shouldn't be a wonder.
In a way, I feel much better about that 1.7k on average now.
To say something more about that darned GS: In the first four heroics Pupunen got two purples and two blues to replace the levelling gear. First purple ever. Her gs rose from that forementioned 2.7k to 2.9k. Her dps, on the other hand, rose about 100 points in instance.
The other revelation came when I started to gain more and better gear to her. Purchased a cheap Merlin's Robe and saw her GS rise above 3k. At the same time her DPS rose to 2.5-2.6 on a dummy, but the standardised GS went down like a cow's tail. I hit the bottom after the high.
The reason to this was simply the disparity of the GS from the stats which really mean for the class. In my case I stacked heavily on the spellpower instead of hit: she's still hitting like a freight train, but misses so many times that her dps is severely affected. Time to see that I gem and enchant her up to the cap of 289 (which comes from the fact that I have both hit effecting talents at max). You can easily have a high GS but completely wrong enchants and gems which eat up your DPS and performance. I had learned that (except the GS part) on my warrior already, that the gems and enchants mean at least as much as the gear itself. Now the reality check was even bigger.
The reason to this was simply the disparity of the GS from the stats which really mean for the class. In my case I stacked heavily on the spellpower instead of hit: she's still hitting like a freight train, but misses so many times that her dps is severely affected. Time to see that I gem and enchant her up to the cap of 289 (which comes from the fact that I have both hit effecting talents at max). You can easily have a high GS but completely wrong enchants and gems which eat up your DPS and performance. I had learned that (except the GS part) on my warrior already, that the gems and enchants mean at least as much as the gear itself. Now the reality check was even bigger.
Gearscore should be used only as a tool, mostly to see how you perform yourself. It's a bloody arbitrary and secondary value which has no real connection to the actual skill of the player or the performance of the toon in the PUG. A player with high GS may actually be the slacker in the group, while the one with the lowest GS - and lowest gear - may well be over-performing on their own. Sadly the one doing their best always get the stick because their numbers don't come out as good as the slacking high geared ones.
The real performance issue is within the mind of those who do not understand the basics.
Then again, all that matters is that the end boss goes down timely and everyone is contributing. Some more than others.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Even more confused
by Copra
Reaching lv80 with another toon caused a new surge of interest in the gearing game. Naturally, as it's the only 'game' left after getting to the level cap, save AH and achievement whoring.
But. As I go through the suggestion lists, specific forums and information, I'm getting more and more confused on how to gear a newly dinged character. The suggestions are either for a levelling build or for raiding build: there is nothing for the inbetween.
And the information from a site like Gear-Wishlist gives as 'top gear' such gearing options which are available only from the raid content: how the heck can a new character at level cap get into them, as the requirements are based on gearscore way above the reach of someone to whom even the tier 9 gear seems unreachable?!
As earlier with my protection warrior, I may well lose my interest in gearing my shadow priest. The extremely heavy current emphasis on the raid level gear seems so far out of reach that... it seems impossible.
Any ideas on how to overcome this and/or gear a character for PUGging even the more PUGged raids (ToC, Sarth, VoA)? I'd need that push for both my tank and shadowpriest.
Thank you in advance
.
.
Reaching lv80 with another toon caused a new surge of interest in the gearing game. Naturally, as it's the only 'game' left after getting to the level cap, save AH and achievement whoring.
But. As I go through the suggestion lists, specific forums and information, I'm getting more and more confused on how to gear a newly dinged character. The suggestions are either for a levelling build or for raiding build: there is nothing for the inbetween.
And the information from a site like Gear-Wishlist gives as 'top gear' such gearing options which are available only from the raid content: how the heck can a new character at level cap get into them, as the requirements are based on gearscore way above the reach of someone to whom even the tier 9 gear seems unreachable?!
As earlier with my protection warrior, I may well lose my interest in gearing my shadow priest. The extremely heavy current emphasis on the raid level gear seems so far out of reach that... it seems impossible.
Any ideas on how to overcome this and/or gear a character for PUGging even the more PUGged raids (ToC, Sarth, VoA)? I'd need that push for both my tank and shadowpriest.
Thank you in advance
.
.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
It's a hard life
by Copra
During the last four levels of my shadow priest Pupunen I got my experience mainly from questing. That's what I started to do with the toon in the first place and I decided that that would be the way she would become of age.
However, the lure of the LFD was too much for me, so I gave in a couple of times. Most notably the last Culling of Stratholme, when Pupunen dinged the final ding in this expansion. After which she moved on directly to heroics.
And that was the moment I made the horrible discovery.
PUG in levelling is more horrible in all aspects than PUG in level cap.
Really, the levelling PUGs are a cesspool of badly behaving primadonnas trying to shine with their level capped, Lich King slaughtering mains. Most of the time I felt sick with the bragging and/or bad playing in there. The worst ones were the runs where the tank stated that he was in the instance first time ever and got laughed at. In the end, the dps DK laughing called some names and left the group due to 'noob tank' and 'healer suxx'. (Sidenote here: it was for the best of the run. The replacement DK was excellent professional, who told the group after the instance that it was his first time there, too.)
Then I hit the cap and switched directly to heroics. What a bliss! Smooth runs, no-one was evaluating you and as ranged dps everything was luxury: keep the dps up, always keep casting and stay out of goo. It's way much easier than playing a tank, really. And even more easier than playing a healer!
There is nothing to tell the other players that you are screwing your rotations. Other than dps meter, which everyone is trying to avoid not to show how they are slacking, too.
Playing a tank or a healer is much more straining, that is for sure, and I had had my thoughts on how much easier playing a ranged dps is compared to those positions.
Now I know.
But I also know that the levelling PUGs are awful when compared to heroics at the cap. I don't think it's the water of Northrend that makes the levelling PUG players so bad: it's the air of most exp in least time which these games have taught us to min-max.
It's the idea of playing the game instead of playing a RPG and enjoying the ride.
During the last four levels of my shadow priest Pupunen I got my experience mainly from questing. That's what I started to do with the toon in the first place and I decided that that would be the way she would become of age.
However, the lure of the LFD was too much for me, so I gave in a couple of times. Most notably the last Culling of Stratholme, when Pupunen dinged the final ding in this expansion. After which she moved on directly to heroics.
And that was the moment I made the horrible discovery.
PUG in levelling is more horrible in all aspects than PUG in level cap.
Really, the levelling PUGs are a cesspool of badly behaving primadonnas trying to shine with their level capped, Lich King slaughtering mains. Most of the time I felt sick with the bragging and/or bad playing in there. The worst ones were the runs where the tank stated that he was in the instance first time ever and got laughed at. In the end, the dps DK laughing called some names and left the group due to 'noob tank' and 'healer suxx'. (Sidenote here: it was for the best of the run. The replacement DK was excellent professional, who told the group after the instance that it was his first time there, too.)
Then I hit the cap and switched directly to heroics. What a bliss! Smooth runs, no-one was evaluating you and as ranged dps everything was luxury: keep the dps up, always keep casting and stay out of goo. It's way much easier than playing a tank, really. And even more easier than playing a healer!
There is nothing to tell the other players that you are screwing your rotations. Other than dps meter, which everyone is trying to avoid not to show how they are slacking, too.
Playing a tank or a healer is much more straining, that is for sure, and I had had my thoughts on how much easier playing a ranged dps is compared to those positions.
Now I know.
But I also know that the levelling PUGs are awful when compared to heroics at the cap. I don't think it's the water of Northrend that makes the levelling PUG players so bad: it's the air of most exp in least time which these games have taught us to min-max.
It's the idea of playing the game instead of playing a RPG and enjoying the ride.
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