Heroics, Redux

By the way, the picture in that last post was Sting in Dune (1984). I've never seen it, but I was listening to The Police at the time and found that picture in Google Images. Good shit.

Anyway, having been sufficiently bored at work yesterday, I pondered over my collection of random tank drops in a 10 man Ulduar I ran with the guild a while back and decided that I wanted to piss things off and get them to hit me really hard. Ok, well I do that a lot already, but even MORE so.

So I logged on last night and ran about a half dozen heroics to build a prot set. It wasn't until the very last heroic we did, however, that something occurred to me: your level of happiness in a heroic is directly proportional to your quality of gear.

Let me explain. I remember, way way back when snow blanketed this landlocked hellhole, I was but a young ret paladin with nothing to lose. My 'preparing' for heroics and raids consisted of loading up a movie on my laptop because the white and yellow numbers I was producing weren't enough to keep and hold my attention quite yet.

Get in Vent for a 25 man Naxx PuG? You have to be joking.

Get in Vent or you'll kick me from the raid? I'll be right in, my cat just caught on fire and I have to go put him out.



















Flee, kitty, flee.

Nowadays, I got flasks in my bags, WAY more Symbols of Kings than I'll ever need, multiple drinks at my disposal, headset on, Vent loaded, and some ambient music in the background to add a soundtrack to that particular raid (I love raiding to 80s music, not sure why but it's frickin' awesome).

Thus, last night's heroic grind wasn't as much of a grind as it was a steamroll. My DPS was through the roof and we decimated all in our path. Our group varied a bit after the first three heroics, and by the time we got to the last heroic we were going to do for the night, Azjol-Nerub, this was the group composition:

- Warrior Tank (RL friend)
- OMGZ Amazing, Dope, Sick-Ass Ret Pally (that'd be me)
- Healy Priest (is there any other kind? oh, and RL friend)

and our two PuGs:

- Warlock with 27k Health fully buffed (lawl Life Tap? I dunno what you warlocks do with so much health other than eat it)
- Your typical Undead Rogue

First boss? Downed, easy mode, no problem.

Second boss? Spider gets upstairs, both the 'lock and the rogue think it's bugged and figure 'we can take it' and pull. Rogue dies after his Gay-vasion goes bye-bye, 'lock dies at some point, warrior dies, priest and I run out and lulz over Skype. Rezzed, retry, retribution. 'Nuff said, moving on.

Third boss? Oh boy. Prepare for laughter. Warrior says "I bet you any amount of money that the rogue is going to get one shot by Pound." We pull.

First of all, the warlock gets LOCKED OUT OF THE RING. He seriously didn't know that if you don't get in the stupid thing, you can't do jack shit. So I told him to /dance and he did, thankfully, so we had something to amuse us.

Anyway, the rogue and I are DPSing Anub'arak when I notice the rogue bottom-humping the stupid beetle. If Anub'arak could be said to have a 'center,' the rogue was standing directly beneath it. And much to our shocking, sarcastic surprise, Pound followed closely by death followed closely by 'wtf i wasnt in front of him.'

After an additional 5 minutes or so, we down Anub'arak 3-man style. Oh baby, sweet victory.

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Ok, srs for a second. I am ALL FOR playing the game how you want to play it. If you want to kill murlocs all day in Borean Tundra while wearing grey and white items you bought from some unknown and pointless vendor, that's perfectly fine. But something has to be said for grouping up.

WARNING: OPINION INC!!!

When someone invites you to a group, even if it's a heroic, there's an expectation that you know how to play the character that you have (supposedly) been playing for 80 levels. In the warlock's defense, the 'getting locked out of the ring' scenario is an instance mechanic that perhaps he had never encountered, and if this is indeed the case, then lesson learned.

However, doing under 1000 dps in a heroic doesn't just make you look bad, it hurts your group. Engaging a boss before the tank and causing a wipe also hurts your group (literally, ouchies).

Alright, I think that's enough ranting about that. All in all, I laughed more than I nerd-raged. I mean, come on, it was PERFECT, having a warlock jammin' out to the sound of the other people in his group killing a giant beetle, the latter of which sits on our rogue and squeezes all the un-life out of him with a smoosh; sounds like a sitcom to me.