Tales from the PUG Stone

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
If that made you want to slap people... don't ever try a heroic scenario.

It's even worse.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Shirotsume said:
If that made you want to slap people... don't ever try a heroic scenario.

It's even worse.
I'll refrain from PUGging those then. If I ever do heroic scenarios, it will be with guildies that I can yell at via teamspeak or skype.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Okay, this was so fucking random and stupid that I have to tell it here.

I normally don't do ANYTHING related to PVP, and I usually get pretty annoyed if I ever end up flagged for PVP, though lately, I've been kinda "meh" to the idea because I've been running some of my level 90s through four daily quests in Grizzly Hills that give honor points, as I've always been hoping to get the PVP mounts but dislike PVP.

But this happened on a completely different character. In fact, a level 60 troll Shaman who'd just gotten in Outlands a bit ago. I'd alt-tabbed while flying and accidentally gotten pretty close to the Temple of Telhamat and got flagged, but I didn't care, because there's rarely anyone in Outlands to PVP. So I'm on the Arelion's Mistress quest, which requires you to go to the Cenarion Refuge in Zangarmash and pick up a bottle of Cenarion Spitits sold by the innkeeper.

Here's when the real story starts. The PVP flag was still up when I landed in the inn. I notice a nearby alliance gnome who's flagged for PVP (as evidenced by the fact that his health bar is yellow to me), but again, I don't give two shits.

I buy the spirits and run out, thinking that the gnome was probably AFK or something, and thanking my lucky stars because I didn't feel like doing any world PVP.

However, apparently he wasn't AFK.

He attacked me at such low health that my Shaman's Lightning Shield, which did a pitiful 157 damage, killed him outright. And got me the Honorable Kill achievement.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
Rarely anyone in the outlands to pvp? Maybe on a pve realm, but on pvp, hellfire peninsula is a huge gankzone.


I'm happy I haven't needed to pug things in years, heck I only log in to raid these days anymore anyway. Granted we've gotten to the point of 'if its not a 1 night clear, we're just extending it next week' because everyone has their garrosh mounts and is sick of the tier. Hopefully our blizz connects come through and get us beta invites for raid testing purposes, something I haven't gotten since wrath.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Stormfury said:
Rarely anyone in the outlands to pvp? Maybe on a pve realm, but on pvp, hellfire peninsula is a huge gankzone.


I'm happy I haven't needed to pug things in years, heck I only log in to raid these days anymore anyway. Granted we've gotten to the point of 'if its not a 1 night clear, we're just extending it next week' because everyone has their garrosh mounts and is sick of the tier. Hopefully our blizz connects come through and get us beta invites for raid testing purposes, something I haven't gotten since wrath.
Yeah, I kinda think of PVP realms as a wonderland filled to the brim with assholes and dickheads who love griefing each other.

If I ever even thought about going to a PVP realm, it would never be with a low level character. It would be with a max-level rogue or druid decked out entirely in as much PVP gear as possible and I would move them off the instant an expansion came out, level on a PVE realm, then return once I got them decked out again.

And I'm never going to bother with that unless I win a multi-million dollar lottery.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
akun50 said:
Stormfury said:
Rarely anyone in the outlands to pvp? Maybe on a pve realm, but on pvp, hellfire peninsula is a huge gankzone.


I'm happy I haven't needed to pug things in years, heck I only log in to raid these days anymore anyway. Granted we've gotten to the point of 'if its not a 1 night clear, we're just extending it next week' because everyone has their garrosh mounts and is sick of the tier. Hopefully our blizz connects come through and get us beta invites for raid testing purposes, something I haven't gotten since wrath.
Yeah, I kinda think of PVP realms as a wonderland filled to the brim with assholes and dickheads who love griefing each other.

If I ever even thought about going to a PVP realm, it would never be with a low level character. It would be with a max-level rogue or druid decked out entirely in as much PVP gear as possible and I would move them off the instant an expansion came out, level on a PVE realm, then return once I got them decked out again.

And I'm never going to bother with that unless I win a multi-million dollar lottery.
It's less about gear and more about numbers for world pvp- Just go on patrol with 2-3 of your friends and it doesn't matter how geared the 1 dude you run into is, as long as you and your friends dont suck you can just cc him into oblivion as you kill him.

Of course this could just cause him to get his friends too, causing you to need to escalate, but yeah.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Az from HeelVsBabyface has gone over the talents for the Hunter, Mage and Warlock. So if you're wanting to check them out, there they are.

From the looks of it, they're making at least one of the level 100 talents spec-specific, meaning that they will change based on what spec you're in.

Just remember that the item squish is in effect on the Beta, so a lot of this damage might not be that amazing compared to what you can do in game at the moment.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
I'm in the beta. All the talents have long since been revealed/posted on mmo-champ.

Right now for Elemental Shamans (the only class I care about) Elemental Fusion kinda sucks, its probably gonna be spew lava and Storm Ele we debate between, unless they make Elemental Fusion more desirable. It doesn't increase Fulmination damage, only the ES (though it does buff FS ticks). Numbers are buggy right now though, its tripling flame shock tick damage instead of just doubling.

New zones are cool so far, and yeah be prepared for numbers to drop dramatically after the squish. Right now ilvls of new loot are ridiculously low (first two zones are dropping 500-515 stuff, me in my 588 stuff is kinda roflstomping), so the new zones are very very easy at the moment.

Multistrike is fun to work with, damage applies much faster then Elemental Overload did, so its hard to tell when its actually happening. Lack of addons makes viewing a lot of things harder for me to see visually, though, and scrolling combat text is one of em. Haven't seen any versatility yet.

If you care at all about shamans, though, totemspot.com is the site to go to. I've never heard of that Az guy before, so Im assuming hes just a youtube personality and not any serious raider.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Stormfury said:
If you care at all about shamans, though, totemspot.com is the site to go to. I've never heard of that Az guy before, so Im assuming hes just a youtube personality and not any serious raider.
He is a serious raider, and in fact, he has a video series "Raid Boss 101", where he shows how to solo various problematic raid bosses, but he does focus mostly on Warlocks. (In fact, if you're a warlock looking to get the Green Fire quest done, he's got a video showing how to do it. He even did a follow up showing that he could do it with a fresh boosted level 90 character in 483 gear, because apparently a lot of people find the Kanrethad fight balls hard.)

IIRC, he does state in each of the videos where he's not on a class he's familiar with (currently the hunter and mage) that he's not an expert on the class, and mostly just seeing the new abilities in action.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
akun50 said:
Stormfury said:
If you care at all about shamans, though, totemspot.com is the site to go to. I've never heard of that Az guy before, so Im assuming hes just a youtube personality and not any serious raider.
He is a serious raider, and in fact, he has a video series "Raid Boss 101", where he shows how to solo various problematic raid bosses, but he does focus mostly on Warlocks. (In fact, if you're a warlock looking to get the Green Fire quest done, he's got a video showing how to do it. He even did a follow up showing that he could do it with a fresh boosted level 90 character in 483 gear, because apparently a lot of people find the Kanrethad fight balls hard.)

IIRC, he does state in each of the videos where he's not on a class he's familiar with (currently the hunter and mage) that he's not an expert on the class, and mostly just seeing the new abilities in action.
He hasn't killed a single heroic boss this xpac, and the only heroic kills he had in cataclysm came during mop.


Nothing wrong with being a dude who makes youtube videos, but yeah, he ain't no serious raider. Soloing old content is something that anyone can do in any gear as long as they aren't very very dumb.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
@Stormfury: You _may_ have looked at the wrong character or perhaps at the wrong server, as he's run quite a few different warlocks (at least three, IIRC). He's got videos of himself soloing every dungeon in MoP on heroic on his channel, so unless he's good at stealing footage or editting out other players, he's legit. Seriously, just go to his channel page and search for "heroic" and you'll find all of the videos he's done solo on heroic MoP dungeons.

In other news, some grinded themselves a level 90 Pandaren.... who is STILL NEUTRAL AND ON THE WANDERING ISLE.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
Akun- I'm not quite sure what you consider a good wow player. I checked his youtube page, and it has a link to his armory. His achievements show up on his armory page, and achievements are account wide, so you can see what he's completed on any of his characters on that account there. That's how I know he hasn't beaten any heroic bosses this xpac.

I can say, objectively, that I am a good wow player. I'm a mod at totemspot, and a main raider in a top US Guild (Vigil, we were #5 in the US, 19th in the world for Siege). That is to say, we were the 5th group of americans/19th group of Westerners (being Asia has a different version of wow then us, so they dont count) to kill heroic Garrosh.

Not even having killed Immerseus, much less any other heroic boss from previous tiers, means he isn't actually a good raider. Maybe if he ran the instances he'd be amazing, but he hasn't. Moreover, I can tell you straight up that the skill curve for WoW, despite what people say, is actually extremely steep, and the people who are the best are really that much better then even people just below them, much less the people all the way down at the bottom. There really is that much you could be doing better at pretty much every level, and some classes are more noticeable then others (oh my god warlocks. Great warlocks are pretty much the holy grail for any raiding guild, and I've raided with a few that would teach our other locks how to be better, and the differences would be so staggering if they listened or not).

tl;dr soloing heroic dungeons is not an indicator of being a serious raider. He has literally done zero serious raiding this entire expansion, and that's even using the first 12 bosses as 'serious'.
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
Keep in mind akun is more about leveling and alts and shit. To him, soloing a dungeon IS serious pve skill.

Ignoring the fact, of course, that some classes are literally physically incapable of dying in a heroic dungeon unless you strip naked or pull the whole thing at once.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
Ah. That explains it then. I can certainly understand enjoying the leveling process, and leveling multiple alts.

It's just not really an indicator of skill in WoW that people usually judge a player by.

I can break down a WoL parse easy (fuck warcraftlogs : (, I hate the site) to explain what a person is doing wrong on a class that I know shit about. To a lesser degree their gearing choices can impact that too (though gemming correctly and reforging to the proper secondary stat is like the most basic of basics, outside of a rune of origination class). I can easily look at past achievements to see when they killed what, and compare that kill date to when it mattered that you got one (ie relevant raiding tier, pre-nerfs, at a competitive kill date). Progression raiding is hard, and theres a reason the same few guilds are the ones you see at the top.

That's how I judge skill, and whether someone is a serious raider. There's absolutely nothing wrong with not being a serious raider, but if asked to judge whether the person was a good player, I'd have nothing to go on and would have to say they aren't. Like that youtube dude. Literally nothing done. He's killed a few cataclysm heroics a few months ago, and that's it (note when I say heroics I mean heroic raids, not dungeons. Heroic dungeons haven't been hard since BC).
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Ah, my apologies. I usually see the term "serious raider" and I guess I think something else entirely: i.e. someone who seems to raid (or has raided) regularly.

And I know the current level of heroic dungeons is garbage too. I should know, I ran them enough to be bored with each of them when I was trying to gear up in early MoP.

But I am confused as to how Az has those videos up of himself defeating heroic dungeons if he doesn't have the achievements for them. Maybe he did them on the PBE? I know he does a lot of stuff on the PBE, so maybe he just hasn't gotten around to doing it on the live servers.
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
Stormfury is talking about heroic RAIDS, not heroic dungeons.

And it's generally best not to be serious when you're raiding. The best raiders I have ever grouped with (and yes, for heroic raids as well) were the ones who never took anything seriously.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
There is a big differences between dungeons and raids.

Dungeons (whether they be normal or heroic) are designed for 5 people to complete. Raids are designed for 10 or 25 people to beat (there are also old 20/40 man raids as well, and in the future the hardest raid difficulty will be 20 people only). Dungeons are supposed to be a stepping stone to get into raids. They drop lower ilvl loot, and are mechanically easier on the player.

For example, in this current MoP expansion, Heroic Dungeons drop ilvl 463 loot. In comparison, the first raiding tier (in this case it is tier 14) drops ilvl 489/496 in normal modes, and 502/509 in heroic modes. The second raiding tier (t15) drops 522 in normal and 535 in heroic, and the third raiding tier (t16, the current raiding tier) drops 553 in normal and 566 in heroic.

Ilvl stands for Item Level. It is what determines how many stat points the item can have on it (in terms of how much of a particular stat it gives, like how much agility or how much crit is on it). There is a large difference in even a few ilvls, so that if you had a raid of people in full 580+ gear, you would be able to waltz thru t14 with your eyes closed, significantly fewer healers, and kill bosses much faster with much higher dps.

And that's all in the same expansion, where you're the same level.

Consider previous expansions, where you gain not just the ilvl boost, but also simply being higher level. For example, The Lich King at the end of Icecrown Citadel drops gear that ranges from 258 on 10man normal (back then 10man dropped different, lower ilvl loot but was also on a different lockout from 25man) and 284 on heroic 25. Heroic LK was an incredibly difficult fight when it was current content, requiring intense coordination to beat (fuck those valks, fuck defiles, Shadow Traps were hilarious though). That was in ilvl 260-280 gear at lvl 80 though. The difference between a lvl 80 character in that ilvl vs a lvl 90 in 565 (like Az the youtuber is) is staggering. We're talking your average dps having like 30k hp in Wrath. Unbuffed, I have 713k hp right now according to my armory. That's more then 20x the hp.

The bosses that Az is teaching you how to solo are old content bosses, not current content. These are bosses that were hard in Vanilla, BC, and Wrath, but are jokes in MoP gear. The set of videos even clearly says "Old Bosses" in the title (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWcyGtiFsXFXMSp7_67l8xHstBUJOU6SW).

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/thunderhorn/Azbats/simple is his armory page. If you click on achievements on the left, then dungeons and raids, you can see his achievement date (the date he first gained said achievement) you can then narrow his dungeon/raid achievements down per expansion, and see the kill dates he has for various bosses across the entire game.

They are all very, very bad. Moreover, he doesn't HAVE the achievement for any of the heroic bosses this expansion, not even t14 heroic bosses that would be incredibly easy (as they are tuned to be beaten by people in 489/496 gear), which is an indicator that he doesn't really care about current raiding.

This is perfectly fine. I'm not judging him, nor am i judging you, for not doing this stuff.

However, it IS one of the two major metrics used to determine if someone is 'a good player' in terms of actual player skill, the other being pvp achievements. I can say that I'm a good raider because I've killed every boss when it was relevant since the start of wrath. I was getting US top 80-100 kills (which is awful, in retrospect) in wrath, US top 50-80 kills in Cata, and US top 5 kills in MoP. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/mal%27ganis/ikestorm/advanced is my main.

If you ever have Elemental Shaman questions, feel free to ask : ).
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Stormfury said:
If you ever have Elemental Shaman questions, feel free to ask : ).
Actually, I kinda do. I'm leveling an elemental shaman alt (she's ALMOST ready for Northrend), but I gotta ask:

Should I bother with any glyphs? And if so, which ones do you recommend most?
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
I'll save him the time for one of those questions:

Yes, bother with glyphs.

That's like asking if you should bother to use talents :p
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
yep, glyphs are good : ).

Minor glyphs are more useful for leveling then major ones, really. If you find yourself dying a lot, the minor glyph that lets you use GW while dead is amazing. There's also the auto-waterwalking while turned into a GW glyph which could be useful, as well as the half-cd on Astral Recall glyph (if you find yourself hearthing even more often then your astral recall and hearthstone can take).

As for majors, glyph of lightning shield is pretty mandatory. For leveling, I'd probably say to also take glyph of CL if you aoe pull a lot, and glyph of Flame shock if you don't. CL is probably better though, and then you should pick up FS at 75.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
I think I've only died about six or so times (twice at least from my internet shitting itself, and the other four because I ended up pulling more and/or stronger mobs than I could handle and couldn't get away in time), but since most of those were because of AoE issues... I'm going to hope that someone in my guild can make me those glyphs.

If not, then I'm hoping the auction house on my server isn't TOO stupidly expensive on those.
 

akun50

Well-Known Member
Most of my characters are on Doomhammer, but since I've filled up the slots on DH; I'm leveling my Shaman and Monk on Nesingwary. I've heard Nesingwary has some toxic community, but I haven't really met anything that's seemed overly toxic and/or negative.

I was able to get the glyphs for Flame Shock and Astral Recall at fairly reasonable prices, but I didn't have enough left over for any of the others (which were 175+ gold, compared to the 25g for Astral Recall and the 84g for Flame Shock, and I've just finish buying Northern Flying for both my Monk and Shaman AND upping their professions). :( I'm going to try and get around to doing some solo raids/dungeons on the DK i've got on Nesingwary to buy glyphs for my monk and shaman.

BTW, anyone got good suggestions for glyphs for a Monk Healer?
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
icy-veins will usually be accurate enough for your purposes.

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/
 
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