Tales from the PUG Stone

[endev8003]

I like VH. I usually cheer when I get it on random HC.

On Sunday my guild leader decided to do some ICC10 on his alt. So he asks me if I'm willing to tank heal with my druid. I decide to go for it since I'm rather bored.

I haven't healed in the last 2 months (and that was once on Ahune), have never tank healed in a raid and have done only 3 bosses in ICC (Marrowgar, which was downed, Deathwhisper and Saurfang, which we wpiped on). I expected it to go poorly.

We did really well. Wiped once on Marrowgar, where the raid healer died in the first 10 seconds. Second time was easy though. No problems with Deathwhisper and Gunship battle. On Saurfang we decided that the raid healer should go DPS, the offtank healer (shaman) would raid heal and I would heal both tanks. Everything went well until I DC'ed. I can't remember how much HP Saurfang had, but it was really low. I come back and find that the boss has been downed and nobody died :yay: .

We had another wipe on the miniboss (Svalna, or something like that). After that we had a small break and we found out that the MT (not from our guild) hadn't tanked ICC before. Half the ppl in the raid hasn't done ICC either and our average GS was around 5K. So we were all quite proud of ourself at that point.

We had a lot of trouble with Festergut though. Had about 5 wipes before we managed to down him. We had one try on Rotface before our raid healer had to leave. We decided that it was unlikely to get another raid healer at that point so we called it quits.

Overall, a good run, but I didn't get any drops. A healer belt dropped, but I already had Belt of Ossus. I also managed to get the friendly Ashen Verdict ring, but it's not really as upgrade for the rings I had (one Kirin Tor ring and one of the emblem rings). Slight increase in health, mana and haste but my spellpower and regen dropped. I found out later that my casting regen did increase, but I didn't have any mana problems at that time, so I kept my emblem ring. I'll have to wait for the honored ring.

 

[akun50]

I like VH. I usually cheer when I get it on random HC.

I don't mind TANKING Violet Hold. However, healing it, especially at less than 80, is a bit chaotic, especially when I've got mostly greens on my priestess.

..... I don't think I've gotten her the final Major Glyphs...

 

[endev8003]

I like VH. I usually cheer when I get it on random HC.

I don't mind TANKING Violet Hold. However, healing it, especially at less than 80, is a bit chaotic, especially when I've got mostly greens on my priestess.

..... I don't think I've gotten her the final Major Glyphs...

You only get the final major glyph at 80, afaik.

I agree with the healing below level 80 though. There is a big difference in spells and abilities at 80 and below 80. I saw it with my Druid and Mark of the Wild, as well as my Shaman with all of the totems.

VH mostly depends on which bosses you get. Get a bad combination and it's a nightmare. Get a good combo and it's a walk in the park. Xevozz and Zuramat is difficult. Erekem is difficult if you kill his adds first. Ichoron is a pain, but mostly for dps. Lavanthor and Moragg is relatively easy.

 

[violinmana]

I don't understand the fuss you're all making about Heroics. The only ones I've ever had a problem was pre-patch Pit of Saron because of the bugs, and Halls of Reflection because of idiots standing in the middle. Otherwise, everything else is cake.

 

[mgsaintz]

I don't understand the fuss you're all making about Heroics. The only ones I've ever had a problem was pre-patch Pit of Saron because of the bugs, and Halls of Reflection because of idiots standing in the middle. Otherwise, everything else is cake.

Heroics can be a problem for recent 80s even if you know how to run them, but after gaining a certain amount of gear it's just cakewalk. There are a few exceptions like Old Kingdom and Halls of Reflection, if you make a stupid mistake you can wipe the group no matter how geared the group is.

 

[Solarman]

I don't understand the fuss you're all making about Heroics. The only ones I've ever had a problem was pre-patch Pit of Saron because of the bugs, and Halls of Reflection because of idiots standing in the middle. Otherwise, everything else is cake.

Heroics can be a problem for recent 80s even if you know how to run them, but after gaining a certain amount of gear it's just cakewalk. There are a few exceptions like Old Kingdom and Halls of Reflection, if you make a stupid mistake you can wipe the group no matter how geared the group is.

HoR you can't even get into on a random without enough gear to do decent dps. And they're only a problem if your entire group is low-geared new-80s, which shouldn't happen (at least, not often) with the new dungeon finder system. If you're specifically grabbing low-geared and inexperienced people for this, you're doing it wrong.

 

[mgsaintz]

Not really I've come across people who shouldn't be in HoR, but then dps isn't the real issue in HoR it's that you need the right tank and heals, as in people who know what to do with their roles. The only issue with dps is taking down the mobs in the right priority and do it fast enough so you can give the healer time to recover his mana between pulls and also don't do something stupid to give the healer more work than is needed.

 

[Solarman]

Not really I've come across people who shouldn't be in HoR, but then dps isn't the real issue in HoR it's that you need the right tank and heals, as in people who know what to do with their roles.á The only issue with dps is taking down the mobs in the right priority and do it fast enough so you can give the healer time to recover his mana between pulls and also don't do something stupid to give the healer more work than is needed.

Rule #76: No excuses, play like a champion.

If you can't handle it, don't run it. If you prove you can't handle it, I'll start the vote to kick you. I've never been in a group for HoR where the tank or heals was so bad we couldn't finish. PoS, yes, but not HoR. Also, recover mana between trash pulls? Only if you're not geared enough to be in the instance anyway.

edit: Here's how HoR goes for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY GROUPS:

Waves 1-4: everyone hides in the corner so LoS kicks in, AoE everything. Dies.
Falric: dies. Healer may need mana, but there's actually time between the waves.
Waves 6-9: everyone hides in the corner so LoS kicks in, AoE everything. Dies.
Marwyn: dies. Healer may need mana, but no more waves.

and on LK flight:

kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, all dead, move on, repeat. Healer never needs to stop for mana because shit dies, and healer's (and possibly other druid's) mana cooldowns are powerful enough to fill his needs.

I've tanked it, I've healed it, I've dpsed it. Shit. Dies.

 

[Kayeich]

You've been -incredibly- fortunate then, Solar. Either with getting competent people, or geared people. But honestly, screw your rule 76. It's retarded and useless bullshit.

I've been in all three roles as well (usually healer, but I've done it as tank/dps), and I can tell you that people wipe on HoR, at least the heroic version. Hell, I've posted horror stories about HoR in this thread before.

I don't know how the gear requirements work, if they're less stringent for certain specs/classes, or if people spoof it by putting on high level pvp gear or whatnot, but I've seen people that -don't- have the gear for the instance get in. Regularly.

A lot of the people that -are- geared in my battlegroup also tend to leave party when they see HoR pop up, meaning sooner or later we end up with some undergeared retard. People would rather take 30 minute deserter debuff than go through that instance. Hell, I see people -offering- gold to tanks/healers to queue up with them for HoR, because of this.

I don't even see people ditching most other instances with the frequency they do HoR. On occassion I see it on PoS, OK, CoS (this one just because it's long/boring), or Occulus. But not like I do in HoR.

Worse, it's usually going to end up an undergeared retard -tank-, that eventually sticks around, because tanks get almost instant queues here. So they don't really give a damn about the deserter debuff.

And unless they've changed things, you -still- can't vote to kick for about 15 minutes into the instance. I am positive that they haven't changed that idiocy either because the other day I had an afk'er at the start of the instance and I couldn't vote to kick him. That's 15 minutes of wipes if someone is bad in HoR or a 30 minute deserter debuff.

Mgsaintz is also right about people needing to know what's going on. Just hiding behind the corner for LoS won't do much if the following happens:
a) tank doesn't pick up threat on every mob. Hard to do if dps blows everything up as soon as it appears around the corner, and isn't even targetting the same things. Or if tank, y'know, SUCKS.
b) people don't CC in an undergeared group (you -can- do this instance with lower gear requirement, but people can't be doing stupid stuff) or focus fire (which leads to point a).
c) healer gets silenced repeatedly and rest of group doesn't do something to prevent that. Sometimes this is the healer's fault though because I've seen healers stay right atop the group and get silenced from those soldiers or not shift their angle to get out of LoS from whatever's hitting them with the silence if ranged.

Finally, healers -do- run out of mana in there even if they're geared. On a paladin, a veritable mana battery, with ToC-25 gear, I've had to drink in HoR. You can't tell me I wasn't geared for that instance at that point.

And because I -have- tried 'playing like a champion', and aggro is all over the place because tank can't hold aggro, dps can't focus fire or CC, and people keep running out of the cubbyhole so I have to make myself a nice visible target...and I need to heal as if I was in a raid, but without all the raid buffs. And that's going to work out just great for my mana.

Really.

I probably could carry someone through it now that I'm in ICC-25 HM gear, but honestly? I'd rather take the 30minute deserter debuff. Your rule 76 and 'playing like a champion' can bite me.

 

[violinmana]

And this is why you should move to Bloodscalp. =D

 

[akun50]

Play like a Champion sounds like a good rule... if everyone listened to the rules.

More often than not, I've been in a fairly decent group that had one person who's jumping around or running ahead of everyone else like a moron, who'll usually almost fuck the rest of us over.

If I'm not the tank, half the time, it's generally a paladin tank moving on while I'm trying to restore my mana.

If I'm the tank, it's the DPS, typically a hunter or rogue.

 

[LXK3K]

I will say this. HHOR is currently the only instance left that requires the group to pay attention and think. Therefore people fail at it because almost 90% of the current WoW crowd are casuals and pants-on-head retarded cousins of those casuals. Thus the VERY high fail rate of that instance. If you are having problems in any other heroic, you are supremely bad and need to uninstall because its a total and complete faceroll with the current dungeon finder system.

 

[akun50]

I've completed most of the other heroics. The only ones I haven't completed are the ones I'm either not geared enough to get in or Raids, of which I've yet to take part in.

The sole exception is Heroic Forge of Souls and I've only gotten that one once on random and the only reason we didn't complete it was because the group was tired of wiping on the Devourer of Souls after the third attempt, despite getting it down to 1000 health before we all died

I simply lack the time to do heavy grinding for gear, hence I probably won't be ever be set for most of the higher end stuff (i.e. the ones that require a very high gear score).

 

[violinmana]

I will say this. HHOR is currently the only instance left that requires the group to pay attention and think. Therefore people fail at it because almost 90% of the current WoW crowd are casuals and pants-on-head retarded cousins of those casuals. Thus the VERY high fail rate of that instance. If you are having problems in any other heroic, you are supremely bad and need to uninstall because its a total and complete faceroll with the current dungeon finder system.

:yay:

Although, to be fair, tanking is somewhat difficult if you have insanely high dps pulling sutff off of you, am I right?

 

[Darksnider05]

I will say this. HHOR is currently the only instance left that requires the group to pay attention and think. Therefore people fail at it because almost 90% of the current WoW crowd are casuals and pants-on-head retarded cousins of those casuals. Thus the VERY high fail rate of that instance. If you are having problems in any other heroic, you are supremely bad and need to uninstall because its a total and complete faceroll with the current dungeon finder system.

:yay:

Although, to be fair, tanking is somewhat difficult if you have insanely high dps pulling sutff off of you, am I right?

ugh it can be testing as a tank to deal with High dps rollas not impossible but annoying.

 

[LXK3K]

I will say this. HHOR is currently the only instance left that requires the group to pay attention and think. Therefore people fail at it because almost 90% of the current WoW crowd are casuals and pants-on-head retarded cousins of those casuals. Thus the VERY high fail rate of that instance. If you are having problems in any other heroic, you are supremely bad and need to uninstall because its a total and complete faceroll with the current dungeon finder system.

:yay:

Although, to be fair, tanking is somewhat difficult if you have insanely high dps pulling sutff off of you, am I right?

One Mangle and your shitty DK magics are not an issue. HEAR ME?! ONE MANGLE!!!

 

[mgsaintz]

Not really, it's also the dps responsibility to make sure that they don't pull the mob away from the tank, mind you I often make that mistake as a mage but with each death and high repair bill I've learned to curve my dps and save my major nuking when the mob is about to die. Mind you there's a limit on how much they can pull back before it becomes detrimental to the group, so it's a balance of smart dpsing and good tanking in situations with high geared dps and lower geared tanks. With HHoR it also depends on what class the tank is, with multiple mobs a warrior tank for instance will have a nightmare trying to keep agro same with a lower geared dk tank.

 

[Juubi]

A friend of mine is helping me run heroics and gear up in tier 9. My guild is hoping to get me familiarized with the raids and geared enough to handle it so I can replace the GM's unholy death knight.

 

[violinmana]

I will say this. HHOR is currently the only instance left that requires the group to pay attention and think. Therefore people fail at it because almost 90% of the current WoW crowd are casuals and pants-on-head retarded cousins of those casuals. Thus the VERY high fail rate of that instance. If you are having problems in any other heroic, you are supremely bad and need to uninstall because its a total and complete faceroll with the current dungeon finder system.

:yay:

Although, to be fair, tanking is somewhat difficult if you have insanely high dps pulling sutff off of you, am I right?

One Mangle and your shitty DK magics are not an issue. HEAR ME?! ONE MANGLE!!!

But if you can't even get that one mangle off... or really, even get the rage for that one mangle... XD

 

[Belgarion213]

While I have stopped running heroics altogether now (just run them so many times I'm utterly sick of them) HHoR was the most annoying instance to run. Whether its moronic tanks or DPS not focusing damage on the right mobs or healers being silenced...


I will say that the change Blizzard made to make the 'escape from the lich king' was bloody annoying, I hate that stupid 'instantly die' thing because when you ARE running with a lower geared tank/dps so often you DO get caught and its bloody annoying. More heaps of times people would see the instance and jump, more often than ever old Occulus.

 

[Kayeich]

That's kind of surprising to hear. If a group actually manages to make it to the LK event, they usually have enough dps to make it through (you do need a certain amount of dps on the waves for boss 1-2, too).

But yeah, I generally don't run heroics anymore on my paladin, except an occassional heroic daily and that's it. Haven't had to deal with H-HoR in a while, though I do get PoS and FoS on occassion. Generally, it's Gundrak for whatever reason though. Or Old Kingdom.

But I almost have a rogue and DK to level 80, so those are going to be heroic binging to get geared up which is going to suck. Hopefully I can sucker some guildies into doing it with me so I have people I trust watching my back. >_<

 

[Solarman]

You've been -incredibly- fortunate then, Solar. Either with getting competent people, or geared people. But honestly, screw your rule 76. It's retarded and useless bullshit.

I've been in all three roles as well (usually healer, but I've done it as tank/dps), and I can tell you that people wipe on HoR, at least the heroic version. Hell, I've posted horror stories about HoR in this thread before.

I don't know how the gear requirements work, if they're less stringent for certain specs/classes, or if people spoof it by putting on high level pvp gear or whatnot, but I've seen people that -don't- have the gear for the instance get in. Regularly.

A lot of the people that -are- geared in my battlegroup also tend to leave party when they see HoR pop up, meaning sooner or later we end up with some undergeared retard. People would rather take 30 minute deserter debuff than go through that instance. Hell, I see people -offering- gold to tanks/healers to queue up with them for HoR, because of this.

I don't even see people ditching most other instances with the frequency they do HoR. On occassion I see it on PoS, OK, CoS (this one just because it's long/boring), or Occulus. But not like I do in HoR.

Worse, it's usually going to end up an undergeared retard -tank-, that eventually sticks around, because tanks get almost instant queues here. So they don't really give a damn about the deserter debuff.

And unless they've changed things, you -still- can't vote to kick for about 15 minutes into the instance. I am positive that they haven't changed that idiocy either because the other day I had an afk'er at the start of the instance and I couldn't vote to kick him. That's 15 minutes of wipes if someone is bad in HoR or a 30 minute deserter debuff.

Mgsaintz is also right about people needing to know what's going on. Just hiding behind the corner for LoS won't do much if the following happens:
a) tank doesn't pick up threat on every mob. Hard to do if dps blows everything up as soon as it appears around the corner, and isn't even targetting the same things. Or if tank, y'know, SUCKS.
B) people don't CC in an undergeared group (you -can- do this instance with lower gear requirement, but people can't be doing stupid stuff) or focus fire (which leads to point a).
c) healer gets silenced repeatedly and rest of group doesn't do something to prevent that. Sometimes this is the healer's fault though because I've seen healers stay right atop the group and get silenced from those soldiers or not shift their angle to get out of LoS from whatever's hitting them with the silence if ranged.

Finally, healers -do- run out of mana in there even if they're geared. On a paladin, a veritable mana battery, with ToC-25 gear, I've had to drink in HoR. You can't tell me I wasn't geared for that instance at that point.

And because I -have- tried 'playing like a champion', and aggro is all over the place because tank can't hold aggro, dps can't focus fire or CC, and people keep running out of the cubbyhole so I have to make myself a nice visible target...and I need to heal as if I was in a raid, but without all the raid buffs. And that's going to work out just great for my mana.

Really.

I probably could carry someone through it now that I'm in ICC-25 HM gear, but honestly? I'd rather take the 30minute deserter debuff. Your rule 76 and 'playing like a champion' can bite me.

All I hear is "Wah wah wah, my groups are bad, not me." Might be true. One person playing like a champion isn't enough. Takes the whole group. Rule #76 is for when somebody tries to divert the blame for their fuckups. And yes, I HAVE been fortunate that only the DPS has been bad players for my HoR runs... except that I rarely pug a tank, and healers are universally decent back here (even with you gone), though I have had to deal with dumb tanks, or tanks that lose aggro (we still don't CC, and we still win). And if you think you're a mana battery in 277 gear, o Cerisse, let me just say that I often forget I HAVE mana, even in 5-mans, and my healing gear tops out at 264, majority's 251, and bottoms out at 245, and I've been like this since the 226s.

In short: grab a pocket tank or druid (innervate ftw!), and less qq more pewpew.

/jackassery done.

And Akun, if you can get into HHoR, there aren't any heroics that you're not geared enough to get into.

 

[Kayeich]

To clarify: I think holy paladins are mana batteries in general as a healer, regardless of gear level. That said, even with ToC level gear back when I actually wanted gear/emblems, my mana would still sometimes get rocked trying to keep people alive in that instance.

That instance requires a certain level of coordination/awareness to happen if you don't outgear it. And I've seen that level not being met enough times, that I'm just not going to agree with you in regards to HoR being a pewpew instance like all the rest.

And really, I don't see anybody else calling it an easy instance besides you, so again, I stand by the statement that you've been lucky.

As for pocket tank/heals...yeah, when my alts hit 80, I'll probably try to sucker some guildies into helping me power through some heroics to earn my emblems.

 

[akun50]

And Akun, if you can get into HHoR, there aren't any heroics that you're not geared enough to get into.

Actually, I might've mistyped. I meant to say that I'm NOT geared for HHoR.

I should probably at least grind for a decent chest piece to replace the PoS that I have, but I've yet to see anything for the chest DROP. I'll probably wind up grinding up emblems of triumph and buying one. <_<

 

[Solarman]

To clarify: I think holy paladins are mana batteries in general as a healer, regardless of gear level. That said, even with ToC level gear back when I actually wanted gear/emblems, my mana would still sometimes get rocked trying to keep people alive in that instance.

That instance requires a certain level of coordination/awareness to happen if you don't outgear it. And I've seen that level not being met enough times, that I'm just not going to agree with you in regards to HoR being a pewpew instance like all the rest.

And really, I don't see anybody else calling it an easy instance besides you, so again, I stand by the statement that you've been lucky.

As for pocket tank/heals...yeah, when my alts hit 80, I'll probably try to sucker some guildies into helping me power through some heroics to earn my emblems.

Oh, I'm not calling it easy, because it's not (easy is Nexus or ToC5 sort of crap). I'm just saying it's not HARD if people aren't dumb, and I've made my own luck (read: grabbed me a tank and healed or grabbed me a healer and tanked, or gotten a full group together, or rarely it WAS just luck and I've never pugged into a bad tank or healer for that one) so that the idiots go elsewhere or are DPS, where idiocy is more easily dealt with.

It's a challenging but still beatable instance if everyone's in full 226 gear and knows wtf they're doing. It's pewpew if everybody's in full Tier 9 or higher and knows wtf they're doing. It's pewpew if your tank and healer are in T10 and people know what they're doing. It's challenging if your dps or healer are meh. Basically, it's a skillcheck instance, and from what you're saying, Mal'Ganis's battlegroup has NO SKILL in general; whereas back here on Bloodscalp's, healbots and tanks are either fairly skilled if they make it to that level, or the dumb ones just aren't on when I run shit, which is incorrect, since I get dumb healers, at least, for non-HoR instances.

So, in conclusion, I stand by my statement that if your group is moderately skilled and follows Rule #76, it's just another 3-boss instance that makes you actually work for it, like a good instance should be; and I stand by my jackassery at Mal'Ganis's battlegroup's average lack of skill at higher gear levels versus my own battlegroup's.

By the way, I'd like you to remember the difficulty of HMgT with non-optimal groups (and even with optimal groups that didn't have the gear), compared to HHoR. Yeah. Quit your whining, and thank all that's good and holy that they didn't do that again.