World of Warcraft: Current Year

Just advertising ourselves, but if anyone is on 11AM-2/3PM EST on saturdays you can join the RR crew (Horde for normal BRF. Xrealm is fine

I try "AOTC-only" heroic HM pugs on my rogue and get people who kill kargath with 3 people alive (berserk rush - feign! berserk rush - ice block! etc) and have no fucking chance of getting past butcher because the leadership are all clueless fucks who are 6/7 normal at best. I'm done with it - my guild does nothing fri-sun and I get antsy to play my alt because I enjoy rogue too but I'll just have to cut that out for now. No more pugging, the decline in quality over the last few weeks has been un-fucking real, even with my own comments here predicting the exponential decline. I can't believe I got AOTC in the first place in a full pug because holy goddamn are people bad now. But I tell myself all of this yet I keep giving it a try because I'm an addicted idiot and other games bore me too fast.

Then again, once we're back in mythic I'll probably be cured of any desire to play more than the 3 raid nights. Hell, most of the time it cures me of any desire to play WoW at all. That's what's great about it. If it goes well, it goes well. If it goes bad, then I don't want to play any more and don't care. Win/win!

Our third Christian Casual 3-hour raid night is actually tonight, so I'm sure I'll be stuck at the ~8/10 club with the rest of the world soon after busting balls on furnace or council_017. I'm guessing K... Kfatguy will get a buff since he's just a joke for a wing boss. 2% on third pull, wat? We went down there with a few minutes to go just to get a look.

Ubiquitrips_sl said:

Largely because I don't want the responsibility. Secondly, because I don't have AOTC and am not 665+ (657) myself and I don't want to be that guy.

Perhaps I will feel differently once I am left with only really needing Imp gear and / or next tier is on the way.

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I hear you man. I had a pretty good experience overall with pugs. I got better at filtering out which raid was going to do things and which were going to fail-cascade. I got AOTC before my guild was 2/7H. It is probably worse now as you're working with the slower crowd, but I'm going to put it to the test this afternoon. Got two friends who are pug-adverse but need highmaul loot. I'm going to see if I can stand up my own raid and knock down 6/7H in a decent time span. Hoping 672 AOTC tank RL in the description will help me get some solid heavy hitters. Anyone 650+ and alliance is welcome to come.

Its not as bad as some make it out to be to have a good experience with a PUG - but its uncommon to rare. I personally want Blizzard to bring back some of the cock blocks that were in place. Reputation grinds to gain access. Having a certain amount of resists to make it past the first boss. Whatever - they were a necessary evil to keep people that invest less than 5 minutes from attempting a raid. It doesnt necessarily have to be some kind of grind, but just some kind of way to know that this guy has at least tried to learn about or prepare for the raid before hand. As of right now, you have to look for some easily fakeable achievement or take their word for it. Im sorry that Im discriminating against little Timmy, but hes not only wasting his time but now hes wasting MY time.

Would you not argue ilvl is a cock block?

It's an artificial one at best. I've seen plenty of terrible players with higher ilvl than my DK, and I've seen people with 65_ characters that would probably do fine even in heroic BRF.

That said, if terrible players can manage to get close to ilvl 680 then I don't think any practical cockblock is going to stop them without making the game annoying as hell for everyone else.

I increasingly think that intangibles are a major part of having a successful endgame. A lot of these intangibles seem to be dealt with by odd qualifications like rep grinds, keying, and time requirements. For my current lifestyle this game does work but if you asked me if it was a really great game for someone who just wanted to spend their free time playing an MMO I'd have to say no.

Gated content really is a copout but it doesn't hurt me because I don't play enough. As a nerd who practically regards gaming as a kind of religion this is an issue, but for a person who really doesn't have the time to play like I did in EQ this isn't so much of an issue.

I just don't see how attunements speak for anything about an individual character. It is just spending a few hours doing some 5man content to unlock some raid content. If a terrible person is willing to throw himself at enough raids to get 680 he's certainly going to spend the time unlocking raid content as well.

Needless_sl said:

Was there somebody on proudmoore that played alliance on here? turns out i have a few friends on proudmoore as well so i'm probably going to transfer my priest there and go disc/holy at 100. Figured i may as well double dip into a guild if i can

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Me.

Send me a whisper/addme Oproh#1859 . We do alt runs on monday of Normal content (now BRF) and raid Tuesday/Thursday Heroic BRF right now. PST Time. I can invite you to the active guild, bear in mind it's very LGBT friendly.

Friendly as in 80% is LGBT. Including transgenders.

Obtenor_sl said:

Friendly as in 80% is LGBT. Including transgenders.

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Raiding with Dykes and Trannies? Holy shit can I get webcam shit between raid fights? Sign me the fuck up.

Just pugged H.Kromog -- 3 tanks made that fight substantially easier. We put two on the left side, one in center, and rotated in/out so stacks didn't get too high. Easy enrage timer.

Will today's maintenance patch the damage from gruuls inferno slice on low group numbers or was that already done?

Tried PUGing Normal Blackhand for an hour or two last night. Was joining a guilds progression run so they were learning as well. We never got to phase 3, but we got close. The dudes in the stands seemed to be the stopper for the group. Good god that fight is a cluster. I am going to need to clear up my UI a bit because bombs, demolition, warnings, etc. has my attention being pulled in so many directions. Also, surviving the initial demolitions was tough as a Holy Pally. I kept wanting to heal people, but if I used anything other than Holy Shock or Prism without bubble I ran around a 75% chance of dying. God help me if I get fixated by a siege engine. With all that said, it was a good time.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Will today's maintenance patch the damage from gruuls inferno slice on low group numbers or was that already done?

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Hotfixed yesterday.

6.0.3 Hotfixes: February 9 - World of Warcraft

Nice

I think that was done before we attempted him in our 10 man though. The damage seemed ridiculously high

Noodlemod_sl said:

Nice

I think that was done before we attempted him in our 10 man though. The damage seemed ridiculously high

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I was talking about this with a friend yesterday. Blizzard has a vested interest to see fights grow progressively easier as a raid leader adds more people. The "leader personalities" are a valuable commodity for Blizzard -- their endgame and product are completely reliant on some people stepping up and guiding the non-leaders through content. A RL running with 29 is better from their standpoint than running with 9. The increased logistical hurdles are "paid for" by an easier boss fight.

In other words, just because youcando it with 10 doesn't necessarily mean that you should... and I suspect the encounters are engineered to encourage you not to.

I can understand that for some encounters. But gruul?

Noodlemod_sl said:

I can understand that for some encounters. But gruul?

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I'm not sure if you're implying that Gruul's difficulty shouldn't scale, or asking how he does. All bosses have a DPS breakpoint; the point at which adding a DPS helps the raid. Think of Heroic Butcher and how easy that fight is if a few 30k+ dps show up and womp him.

More people gives the RL a faster kill, more people to soak, and more cooldowns (this is huge). Think of a 30 man raid cycling through externals on their two tanks compared to a 10 man raid. The 30 man RL will never run out of externals. Tanks can use their own and call freely for as many cooldowns as they need for the big slices.

Also, as I noticed in my Heroic Kromog kill yesterday, having a large raid means you can just utilize a 3rd tank. The DPS deficit will be regained by the extra additional DPS players performing above their breakpoint.

EDIT: In a sense, it almost feels cheesy -- but this is part of their design, and also why Mythic doesnotscale.