/Yawn – A World of Warcraft Blog

This video is a couple weeks old now since I forgot to upload it before leaving for spring break… Oops!

These are from last week. There should also be a Blood Queen Lana’Thel one, but I haven’t uploaded it yet!

Here are some more videos from ICC. I forgot to turn off my UI for these – Nick thinks this is cooler, I prefer it the other way.

Don’t forget to watch these in higher quality and in fullscreen if you want to see the UI more clearly. Also, we still haven’t tried the new wing in ICC, but I think we might be this week… So, more videos coming up potentially!

After writing the previous post and mentioning my DK, I’ve been thinking a little more about the new LFG system and the groups it puts together. Nick and I have a hunch that the groups are selected through some sort of gear score, since it seems like (at least with DPS) there is usually one person doing 3-5k, one doing 2-2.5k, and one in blues and greens doing less than 2k. On occasion, I see people in my guild or in general chat complaining about ‘carrying’ others in heroics or raids. Just to be clear, when a person is being carried it usually implies that they are doing such a small percentage of the damage that they are making little or no impact on the success of the group within the instance or raid.

So when is carrying someone okay? Probably the most important concern is whether the person being carried is causing the group to wipe or keeping the group from completing the instance in a timely manner. For obvious reasons, the former is much clearer cut than the latter. When I’m trying to establish if I should leave a group that is moving slowly, I try to think about the speed at which things are cleared when I come into heroics on less geared alts. That is usually a good benchmark; I’m an okay player even without gear – if these people are worse than that, it might be time to leave. I, honestly, have absolutely no problem carrying other DPS in heroics when I am on my main. I specifically remember when I first got Eau to 80 (back in the days of spamming trade for heroics), I got in on a group that ran about 10 heroics in a chain from a geared guild (which, back then, meant OMG NAXX GEAR, haha). I was so amazed that they all passed on all the blues and purples that I needed so much.

There are times, though, when carrying people doesn’t work out. For example, an undergeared tank or healer often cannot even be carried in a 5 man environment (no amount of pew pew is going to keep you alive, haha). Another place that I consider carrying someone to be ridiculous is in a progression raid. The idea that someone that is being carried in a raid could win a piece of gear over me is irritating, to say the least (this is usually not an issue in our guild 10s since we’re all good friends, but it has come up in 25s occasionally when we merge with other guilds). Raiding is also an environment where healers can be carried, but I think that is just putting unfair strain on the other healers. I don’t feel the same sort of pressure when I am carrying someone else as a DPS.

More generally, it’s pretty pitiful to come into a raid (especially if it’s progression for your guild) without gear, since it’s so easy to pug now and a lot of gear is available either from drops in the new heroics or through emblems (I was able to get Zela, my new-ish 80 rogue to 4k dps in a couple of weeks of running heroics). It’s not that you should be expected to be pulling the top DPS in your guild with heroic gear. It’s that you’ll be doing more damage than the tanks at least (doing less damage than tanks is usually a good benchmark to evaluate if someone is being carried, except if you’re up against a pally tank on AoE groups). Having a lot of emblem gear also shows that you’re a dedicated player and that you’ve played your class/spec for at least a few hours.

Graduate school barely leaves me time to play WoW, so updating this blog has kind of been put on the back burner. A few things have happened since my last postings:

- I changed my rogue (Zaleria) from a female blood elf to a female orc (now named Zela) and got her to 80. Thanks to the new LFG system, she is now fairly geared and pretty fun to play, though I don’t consider myself to know much about rogue yet.

- Our guild on Burning Blade (War Council) reformed as The Phalanx – still not REALLY sure why, since 95% of us are still in it. I think maybe we just needed a fresh start. Anyway, we have been focusing almost primarily on 10 mans and have downed the first 6 bosses in ICC10 (everything up to Putricide). I’ll post some of the videos below.

- I am currently leveling my DK, Freon, though I’m not really sure what I want to do with her. I had initially thought I wanted to tank but now I’m having doubts after listening to some of the drama that guildies have gone through gearing tank alts using the LFG (things like kicks for a gear score that is ‘too low’). I guess we’ll see!

Either way, I’m in kind of a strange place at the moment, since I still don’t know how much free time I’ll really have this semester… I hope it’s more than last semester!

Anyway, here are the videos:

In light of recent leaks regarding vast reshaping of Azeroth for the Cataclysm expansion, I have decided to make a list of events that I hope happen. These opinions come from leveling many many alts through all of these zones. In order of zone level:

Durotar – Goblins hate razors (who knew, it’s a cultural thing I guess) and completely ravage Razor Hill. Garrosh is too busy nerdraging to read anything, so he signs off on a plan to build a cable car between Sen’jin Village and Orgrimmar. Lowbies everywhere rejoice.

Mulgore – Tauren, now in tune with many magics (Paladin magics, Priest magics, and all other lol magics) are finally able to figure out how to miniaturize their home zone. It no longer takes a day and a half to run from Orgrimmar to Thunder Bluff.

Stonetalon Mountains – the Charred Vale finally just burns itself up and becomes a peaceful lake. Harpies become extinct.

Ashenvale – Night Elves become mages, but suck, and therefore explode Astranaar and everything in a 10 mile radius. Rhonin is pissed. There is now a mini-maelstrom in the middle of the zone and a blimp from Zoram’gar Outpost and Splintertree Post. ALTERNATE IDEA: Just give Horde a road that doesn’t go through the freakin’ Alliance town!

Hillsbrad Foothills – Southshore falls off the map, the Horde can now kill yetis and mountain lions without having to worry about Alliance coming and ganking them. Alterac Mountains is absorbed into the same zone and a pact is made between the Horde and Ravenholdt, who become a new faction, but only for Horde. Alliance flock to Caverns of Time to run Battle for Durnholde Keep and spend many hours in Southshore crying and missing it.

Arathi Highlands – the Princess is finally smothered in her cave. Quest line no longer exists. Also, all raptors now drop eyes.

Desolace – disappears, but no one really notices… The last person to level there was in Vanilla WoW anyway.

Dustwallow Marsh – in order to join the Horde, goblins must first cut down all the branches in this zone so that we can finally see it. When we see it, we decide it’s ugly, so we let murlocs take it over. No one ever thinks about it again. Murlocs live happily ever after.

Swamp of Sorrows – see Dustwallow Marsh.

Feralas – road is no longer elevated. No more accidental deaths for auto-running off of the mountain while typing things out in chat to your friends.

Azshara – all players in this zone now have the ability to jump from wherever they are to where they have to be. With time saved from no longer having to look for hours for a way back up in to the zone from the beach, players are finally able to eradicate Naga.

Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes – merge in to one zone with no stupid, huge, hard to navigate cave in the middle.

Deadwind Pass – becomes the new mage portal since Swamp of Sorrows was taken over by Murlocs. Still useless.

Outland – stays classy. We love you, bb!

Northrend – no one ever goes there again. Blizzard apologizes for the crappiness of these zones and implements cold-weather leveling – a scroll that allows alts to level from 70 to 80.

Bonus: Naxxramas floats away from Northrend to settle over Moonglade, where it becomes the second raid of the new expansion. The first raid is Tempest Keep, which would explain why the first time around was merely a setback.

Trying to do the achievement for fishing up The Lurker Below… Little did I know that there would be an additional super secret boss before him!

Why did we almost phail even though we’re all way overgeared for this?

THE DRUID ISN’T HEALING IN THE VORTEX!