Weekend (21 Feb) - In No Particular Order

Weekend (21 Feb) - In No Particular Order

Various members of the DER clan have recently been touting the awesomeness of levelling in random dungeon runs. From the Wild family perspective, the only folks using the dungeon finder were the two level 80s, Wild and JB. The dungeon runs provided badges, pure and simple.

But Dungeon Finder works just as well with under level 80 players that are in search of help for a specific dungeon or dungeon quests, or just for levelling in a dungeon setting instead of questing or pvp. I knew about it, but couldn't convince the likes of Philly, Mery, Melasahnd, Jocelyne, or the others. They continued to level by questing, grinding kills, a bit of pvp, and occasionally by dungeon run throughs with a much higher level friend or two.

Late Friday night DER and Philly battled Wintergrasp and then decided to give the 30s team some pvp time. Druid healer Ando (level 34) and hunter Mery (level 36) paired up for some solid WSG and AB battles. I think we won three of four. The time between matches kept getting longer, though, and Ando brought up the idea of joining the dungeon finder queue for some dungeon action. Mery was a little shy about trying that. She has been very much a solo player most of her life, and even her pvp experience is pretty light. Mery had no experience in five man dungeons and only the vaguest of ideas of what to do. Now, of course she knew all about dungeons, but that knowledge was primarily from Wild's perspective as a druid healer and moonkin. JB added her own insights as well, but neither Wild nor JB knew anything specific about what was expected of a hunter. In general, Mery stood at range and fired away at the bad guys with her bow, and sending her pet into the fray to add additional damage. She could use a few special bowshots for extra damage and used mana. She also could set an Aspect that would provide buffs to her and the rest of the group. Hunters have a range of traps that can be set, as well as some very nice special talents such as Feign Death (which is like playing possum) and the ability to redirect a mob that is after you and send it after someone else. What Mery lacked was the experience or training in knowing what to use and when.

I suppose Mery also had it in her head that these dungeon adventures would be what ancient Wild remembered them to be back in the day (when cows were cows and level 60 was the top of the world). Wild's days of dungeons back in his 30s seemed as tough then as the new dungeons we poke our noses into with every new patch now.

But Ando was winning Mery over with visions of dancing xp and climbing levels. "It'll be fun!"

We joined together, and it only took a few minutes to fill the five man group. We had a mage and two paladins to go with Ando, who was healing, and Mery. Mery had her pet Sassy with her, a gorilla more suited to tanking than DPS, but Mery figured that this was just a trial run. The dungeon was one of the wings of the Scarlet Monastery (SM). SM is a mob crazy dungeon and the denizens just love to flee a fight and go rally others to come and help. On our first or second pull I think we brought down a couple of dozen mobs in about three waves of "Crap, here come some more!" Sassy proved to be quite adept at tanking, and helped keep mobs off of Mery and Ando while Ando poured on the healing.

Back in Wild's days this would have been a wipe. Yet this time, due I'm sure to many factors such as improved gear, dungeon nerfs, and lots of experience from players who have levelled multiple toons, there was no wipe and only one death - the tank. Which oddly didn't seem to hurt us. We laughed it off. The tank said he would slow down a tad, so that we didn't pull that many. We didn't just slow down, though, we all but stopped, and after single and double pulling mobs for a few minutes even Mery was wanting to move things along a little faster. We killed the first boss with no problem and then, with no explanation, both paladins abruptly left the group. They might have been friends on the same server, or they both might have only been interested in the first boss. No idea, but we were now down to three, with no tank.

Well, not quite with no tank. Ando pointed at the next mob in our way, and said, "Let Sassy tank." So that's what we did. Sassy has a Charge ability and that worked wonders in getting a mob's full attention. Once we got into a rhythm, Ando could even pre-strike mobs with moonfire and the four of us (counting Sassy) plowed through the dungeon. We did not get any further help until we were near the final boss, when another player joined us who took over part of the tanking.

Mery led in DPS with 91, but that was really just #1 of 2 since there were only three of us and Ando was healing. Still, Mery was pretty excited when the final boss went down and she DINGED! to level 37. Normal random dungeons don't award badges, but they do reward a satchel that has a blue quality item of gear in it.

Ando and Mery would delve into dungeon finder three more times, again in SM and twice in Razorfen Downs, another mob heavy dungeon a bit higher level than SM. All the time we were playing Ando and Mery kept up a discussion on hunters in pve and Ando (who learned at the knee of hunter Red) offered suggestions for improvement. By the end of the evening Mery's DPS had improved to 123 DPS, not bad considering it started at just 91. Part of that was due to switching out Sassy for a more DPS focused pet, Mery's large black-winged predator, Fleshrypper. The RFD runs were more of a race than a real dungeon battle, as the mobs were no match for the DPS heavy group. Mery was 3rd in DPS, but the two ahead of her were far, far ahead. The only DPSer Mery beat was the other hunter in the group.

When it all ended not only had Mery DINGED 37, she DINGED 38 as well. Ando had jumped from level 34 to level 36. For pure levelling, dungeon finder is by far the fastest way to do it.

Wild was happy for Mery, as she came home all excited about the experience, the new exposure to dungeons, and some new gear to fuss over. Wild was in a reflective mood, though. Wild would never want to go back to the days when lower level players HAD to get into dungeons in order to do mandatory quests and earn the loot to get into the end game content. At least not when getting a dungeon run together could take hours or days or in some cases never. Wild has lots of fond memories of the good ole days, but that wasn't one of them. Yet Wild has his reservations about what dungeons have now become. Wild and JB both discovered quickly that running level 80 heroic dungeons were nothing more than a kill grind. Very little strategy was needed as even modestly geared players way overmatched the content. We can just plow through it, ignoring the carefully crafted strategies that made these encounter interesting and fun. As long as someone had enough sense to know where to go, it was simply kill and move on. And frankly, Wild has been in groups where we just meandered about killing whatever we found.

So Wild was a bit sad when he learned from Mery that lower level dungeon runs are much the same as the level 80 ones. Many players will plow through these dungeons for the xp and the loot, and never experience the thrill of actually learning how to run the dungeon the way it was designed and meant to be done. Maybe even getting a glimpse of how all that lore fit into what was going on in there beyond killing things. Doing Wailing Caverns the first time was an awesome event for a young group of teens, and left an indelible impression on Wild. The same for many other dungeons, which took time and effort to defeat. For all Mery's success, she really didn't use many of her talents and abilities, because they simply weren't needed. It's only when challenged that players really learn how to play. I guess Wild is just getting old.

Back when Philly decided to start levelling again and took up the Jewelcraftng profession in addition to Inscription, I thought the Wild family had it all figured out. JB held on to Alchemy and Herbalism. Wild had his Tailoring and Enchanting, and Melasahnd was going to fill in with Mining and either Blacksmithing or Engineering. There was a lot of activity and Wild was happy that everyone was doing their chores. Then one day Wild discovered that things weren't as organized as he thought.

It started with a Huge Citrine. Philly needed one. No, it is not a drink and it's not a, ahem, toy. It's a gem, ok? There is a daily quest for Jewelcrafters that Wild had told Philly not to bother with until she was high enough level to do the quest. Philly chafed at the restriction for weeks, and when she hit level 73 demanded to try. The mobs she was after were right below Dalaran, just a portal away. Well, she sort of got lost, and got herself killed. Philly doesn't give up, though, and she was determined enough even to ask Wild for help. Wild knew better than to argue, and he went with Philly and killed the mob she needed killed. In addition to what the mob dropped, Philly also needed a sun crystal and a shadow crystal. She prospects ore for gems like that, and got some help from DER with a stack of saronite ore. Mission accomplished. The end result is that Philly earned a JC token. With four tokens she can buy one the top end JC recipes.

Roll forward a day (it's a daily quest, remember). JB gets the JC daily, and it's not the same as the one the day before. She does her research and figures out where to find mobs that she can both reach and can kill at her level. She gets the kill, but this time to go along with that she needs a bloodstone and a huge citrine. The bloodstone was readily available, and Philly knew she had huge citrines, but over time and as more gems were collected, they wound up scattered across the banks of multiple toons. Where the heck were those huge citrines?

It all got sorted out eventually, and one day the Wild family will get more organized. But there was a more immediate issue. The first recipe Philly will buy when she gets four JC tokens is the Runed Cardinal Ruby with it's +23 spell power. Cutting that recipe requires only one thing - a cardinal ruby. These rubies can cost 200g or more each. Miners can find them, but Melasahnd was not yet a good enough miner for that. Buy them? That's when JB smacked herself upside the head. I can make them, she remembered, using an Alchemy transmute. Only one gem can be transmuted per day, something that JB should have already been doing but had forgotten about. Alchemy and gem transmutes? Who would have paired those two things?

So now Philly has to prospect for gems so they can be used in the daily quest she must remember to do, while JB must continue to do her transmute to make the high end gem everyone wants for the cut recipes. For want of a huge citrine we uncovered a bunch of things we should have been doing all along.

By the way, Philly DINGED to level 74 and even took the time to dust off her Discipline spec in the expectation of doing some random dungeon healing to get into practice. We'll see how that works out.

Another thing to report is that on Saturday I received my Authenticator. This is a device that is used to add an extra layer of security when logging into WoW. I have been skeptical about this, but at $6.50 I decided to check it out. I intended to hate it when it came in, but once I set it up I had to admit I should have bought it a long time ago. The device easily fits on a keychain, does not attach in any way to the computer, and can be used anywhere. All I have to do is press a button on the device and type in the number displayed, along with my regular password. Read the Blizzard post to get the details, but it works and it's simple and quick to use. AND, you get a really AWESOME vanity pet once it's been activated!

Information about the next patch (3.3.3) has come out on the heels of announcing a follow on patch (3.3.5). What happened to 3.3.4? Who knows. I'm running long so an explanation will have to come in another post, but there seems to be major changes in the pvp/battlegrounds system and big tweaks to dungeon finder (battlegrounds in dungeon finder? Yep). Patch 3.3.5 has surprised the community by announcing another dungeon - The Ruby Sanctum in the Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. This is a four boss dungeon at the same level as Icecrown Citadel. The merry-go-round turns ever faster. Grind baby grind!

Sorry if things are sounding a bit disjointed. Order should be restored next week, assuming Blizzard doesn't wack us with maintenance on Tuesday again. But I bet they will.