Keep on keeping on

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. I think this quote from Ferris Beuller's Day Off kind of sums up what I've been up to the last few weeks. The last time I blogged I wrote about Virtual Realms and Flex raiding and since then we have received more information about both. I am eagerly awaiting both and I wish I could speed up the patch so that it could be 5.4 already! When I started blogging I had so much free time that I could write a lot of posts in between classes but when I got a job I suddenly lost all that free time. Eventually I had the desire to blog but whenever I would sit down to write something I would get writers block. You (the few readers I still have) probably read the few words I write and think to yourselves "how the hell can it take such a long time to write such short, uninteresting, mindless drivel??" 

Well my response is..uhmm..yeah I got nothing. But since you do read my blog regularly, I can safely reason that you:
1) have bad taste since you read my ramblings
or 
2) enjoy punishing yourself by reading my blog 
or 
3)are either used long delays betwen my blog posts 
or 
4) have me on your feedreader by accident and are now wondering who the hell I am.

So like yeah!

I apologize for the above. I blame global warming or something.

Virtual Flexing

A little bit ago I wrote about my low population server and I listed out a few things that I felt that Blizzard could do to help out not just my server but all low pop servers. Included in that list were the suggestions to merge servers and to open the current tier for cross realm raidability. Two weeks ago Blizzard released not just one but TWO things that I feel will help out all low pop servers when they go live in the 5.4 patch. The two things: Virtual Realms and Flexible Raiding. Do Blizzard developers read my blog and think I have great ideas? Probably not but at the very least they are finally doing something to help low pop servers.

Have Jed, will travel

Well the last post I had written decided that when I sent it to myself it was NOT going to send and so I lost what I had written so far for this post. I think it is a sign that what I had written was crap and that I shouldn’t force anyone to read what I had written. Point made universe, point made.

Here is the basics of today’s post:

Who: Me, possibly you, maybe you, definitely you, oh and you.

What: I’m a bored 90. I like helping people. I’ve decided to offer my services to the WoW public! This means that if you are a lowbie trying to run instances, I can help you out. If you’re coming back to the game and want to know whats changed, I can help you. If you are a healer and want to run old raids but can’t solo them, I can help you. If you don’t know what to do at level cap, I can help you. In a group with friends and need a tank for something, I can help you. Can’t quite solo a difficult quest mob/rare, I can help you.

Where: Thanks to cross realm zones, it can be on my server or your server or that other server over there.

Why: I like helping people and along the way people have helped me with things so I have decided to pay it forward and help others. I get nothing out of doing this other than the satisfaction of knowing that I have helped someone. You aren’t obligated to help anyone else out along the way but if you did it’d be neat.

The details:

I decided to do this one day after spending a few fun hours in Ulduar with a cool Disco Priest and her husband. They had been trying to solo Ulduar for achievements and the mount but they needed a little boost. Having both the 10 and 25 man achievement mounts from Ulduar, I can say that I know my way around that place so I offered up my dk to help out and we managed to get many of the achievements that they needed. This got me thinking about how many people in game have the desire and drive to do things like old raids or rep grinds but have no knowledge about how to go about them.

My guild raids one night a week and the rest of the week I am usually putzing around on alts either leveling them or working on their professions. This causes me to have a lot of time in game where I am bored and looking for something fun to do. Most things are more fun with friends after all. I tend to run parts of the LFR on 3 different characters and always love having someone I know along with me to make it more interesting.

I have a few alts still at 85 that I wouldn't mind leveling through instances/questing with friends. Currently sitting at 85 I have an enh shaman, resto druid, ele/resto shaman, warlock, warrior, spriest, guardian druid, and windwalker monk. At 90 and looking for gear I have a frost mage, frost dk, brewmaster monk, combat rogue, and fire mage. These are all alliance BUT for my horde readers, I have an 86 frost dk that I'd be up for questing/instancing with along with several lowbies from level 20 to 70.

I know to some of my readers this may seem like an elaborate scheme to do something nefarious...but it isn't. I have amazing people in my guild who will gladly help me with stuff when I ask and I know some people out there don't have access to this level of support. I want to help people in the hopes of bringing balance to the force only without the dismemberment and large scale genocide.

In conclusion if you want some help with stuff in game, add me to your friends list: Jedem#1828 and let me know who you are so I can make a note next to your name. Then as long as I'm not in the middle of an instance or on limited time, I will be more than happy to help out. If you want to just chat about stuff in game, I am also down with that. If this is all for naught and no one friends me, well at least I will know that I have tried to do something good for the community and I guess that'll have to be enough for me.

To all the lowbie groups

I am going to start this post by announcing that this is a rant. If you have no desire to read my angry rant, please feel free to browse through my other posts until you find something more to your liking. If you’re still with me, hold on to something because this is going to get angry and possibly violent. I’ve been leveling my panda and I LOVE it! They are a fun class to play regardless of spec and I highly recommend leveling one. Now because I am one of those weird people who like to play a class to level cap as the same spec that they are going to be at said level cap, I tend to level some characters as healers or tanks. For my panda I decided to level as a Brewmaster, which is the tank spec. 

This means that I’ve run a lot of dungeons so far. I usually quest for a bit and then queue for a bit so that I don’t end up running the same dungeon a million times in a row. Nothing like running RFD 5 times in a row to make you want to stop playing for the night. Anyway, since I’ve been leveling I end up in a lot of groups with everyone but me wearing all heirlooms. Why don’t I have heirlooms you ask? Well because until this expansion each account could only have 10 character slots per server. I had one of each class at level cap. I had no need to buy heirlooms because I didn’t have a character that could benefit from them and I would rather spend the JP on other stuff like mounts or crafting mats or gnomish hookers. Had I been smart, I would have bought them with the extra JP I had before it got turned into gold in 5.0.4 or whatever patch it was. But since I’m dumb and didn’t remember to do that, I have no heirlooms.

Things to do to prepare for raiding

I was doing some thinking lately about raiding, more specifically raiding in the new 4.3 raid. With a new raid and new heroics to get gear from, 4.3 is looking to be full of cool things. It is also the perfect time for someone who is leveling at the moment and is interested in raiding to prepare themselves to do so. Between crafted gear, VP/JP gear, BoE epics, and the new heroic gear, someone can go from a freshly dinged 85 wearing greens and quest blues to a nicely geared ready to raid 85.

But getting the gear is only the first step to get yourself ready to raid like a pro. In fact getting gear is usually one of the easier things you can do. My warlock hit 85 on a saturday and couldn't even run regular heroics. So I got to work and between JP gear, BoE epics, and crafting gear, he was only a few points of shy of running trollroics which would up his item level/stats enough so that if I choose to take him into a raid, I can pull my own weight. After some luck with heroic drops he was ready for trollroics!

I know several people are in this boat, finally 85 and wanting to raid in 4.3 so I decided to come up with a few things to do to prepare themselves to raid.

Full Circle

I believe the old saying goes "Some claim that life here began out there." With the 4.2 Firelands patch we've received a new raid instance, new daily quests, new arena gear, new valor/tier gear, and several new achievements. The biggest feature of the patch is the Firelands Raid instance where the last boss is Ragnaros. Yes...the very same Ragnaros that we fought oh so many years ago in Molten Core(but this time he is clearly stronger and more on fire. I guess beating him up and killing his numerous sons kind of pissed him off.


Last week my guild and I took a step into the Firelands to try our luck against the new raid bosses and to see if we could kill a boss or two. What we found was that there is TONS of trash along the way to any boss. There are also some nice BoE epic pieces that drop and a lot of rep to be gathered just by killing trash. In other words, this raid felt like Molten Core part 2. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of raiding Molten Core when it was relevant, let me tell you that it was a long and tedious raid at first. Most people entered MC wearing blues if you were lucky and greens if you had horrible luck with drops. Back in those days, green gear wasn't anywhere close to being as good as the greens of this expansion(Go go "of the eagle gear" for my mage!) Because the developers knew this, they made most of the trash you ran across in MC pretty simple to kill. Granted each type of mob had a special ability that made killing it unique. Lava surgers required you to either spread out or stack in melee(depending on your how your guild did it), Firelords spawned little fire adds that had to be killed quickly or they would spawn more adds, Corehounds had to be turned away from the raid so you wouldn't die from its fire breath or even worse they would fear you into other mobs and Molten Giants required the tanks having their back against a wall or they would get launched when the giant did its stomp.

Well that turned into a wall of text for explanations sake. Why did I go through all that typing to explain how mobs acted in a vanilla raid? Well as we were clearing trash in the Firelands I kept looking around and reminding myself that we were indeed NOT in MC. The zone had an MC feel to it and some of the trash was even the same trash from MC! First mob we pulled was a giant that had a stomp just like in MC, Corehounds still did the same thing, and Surgers are still a pain in the ass for healers. At first I didn't realize the clear connection between the two raids because I was so busy trying to hold agro since I was tanking on my pally but when we cleared our way to Lord Rhyolith there was a gauntlet event at the end of which we had to fight a some large fire elementals. After we wiped due to pulling the entire gauntlet to the fire elementals I realized that my chat was being spammed with  a lava spawn splitting into another lava spawn. I watched that fill up my chat for a few more seconds before I realized that I wanted to yell out "Spawn Spawn!" This being what we used to yell out in MC when a Firelord spawned adds. I was so giddy with excitement that I ran into the living room and told my fiancee who laughed because she remembered what an annoyance the spawns were. I started looking at the add packs we skipped and realizing that they were bigger, stronger versions of trash mobs from MC.

It wasn't until these mobs that I realized that the Firelands felt like an updated Molten Core. Even though we didn't down anything that night, I had such a great time that raid. I know that eventually I will get tired of the Firelands but at least for now I will enjoy the raid because it reminds me of even better times raiding. I give the Firelands my seal of approval due to its fun and interesting fight mechanics, its awesome atmosphere, and its connection to MC. I can't wait until we get to Ragnaros and when I do...you can bet I'll let out a fanboy squee. This has happened before and this will all happen again. What was once old is now new and shiny.

So how is the 4.2 patch treating you all?

Need if you need

Often in heroic randoms, you will see someone ask if it is ok with the group if they need on a piece of gear. That piece could be an upgrade for their main spec or even their offspec. If it's an offspec role, than if they are lucky, no one else needs the piece. But every now and then you will run across someone who doesn't bother to ask if they can need on a piece for their offspec, even after someone else says they need it for their main spec. This is a huge problem for healers and tanks. I have had so many upgrades stolen from my healers and tanks by people who are queued as a dps or a tank or healer.

The old saying "Need if you need" has lead people to assume that just because they CAN need on an item, that they are entitled to roll on it, even if it is not for the spec that they are queued as and it's an upgrade for someone's main spec. People see that they can need on it and figure that their own need outweighs someone else's need. It is both sad and infuriating when I see this happening in instances, the trollroics being the latest cause of this type of behavior. All you can do when someone needs on your upgrade is hope that the WoW loot Gods are on your side and that you out roll the other person. Of course you may have this happen to you several times in an instance and all I can say is Good Luck.

I had this happen to in Zul'Aman when I was healing it on my Gnome Priest. The Paladin tank was obviously not geared for pulling as much as he was and so people were dying because they kept pulling agro on mobs that he was obviously not actively generating threat on. One of the DPS was from the same guild as the tank and he started berating me for letting him die. I explain that "Mr. Pull more then he can handle" can't hold agro on everything and that we should use some CC. Of course I phrased it a little more diplomatically and didn't lay the blame on anyone specifically. I am assuming that the two of them were off in their own vent server talking trash about my healing. We managed to make our way to the Hex Lord Malacross when a healing ring dropped. It was an upgrade for me since I was still sporting two 346 ilevel rings so I naturally needed...and so did the Paladin tank. Maybe he thought that stacking spell power was still the way to go for Paladin threat. Thankfully I won the ring and he apologized for needing on it and I let it go since I had the ring.

We wipe a few times on Daakara because we had the Lynx and the tank didn't understand that he needed to taunt the boss back onto him when it switched to a different target. Finally we kill him and I see what I was hoping for the entire run: the Amani Scepter of Rites. Now this mace hadn't dropped any of the times that I had been there on my priest and I was naturally excited to finally see it. And that's when the bomb dropped; the tank needed the mace...and won. I asked him if I could have it because I was the healer and it was clearly a healing weapon AND a huge upgrade for me. Well that's when the Pally revealed that loot was based on turns or in his words "You won the last piece and now it's my turn to win a piece." He then drops group as I am standing there speechless and right before I drop group his guildee calls me a scrub healer and laughs at me.

If I could punch people through the internet, there would have been two little kids with black eyes somewhere out there. The sad thing is that because of the randomness of the looking for dungeon tool, unless I roll on their servers and chew them out in trade or through whispers, there are no repercussions for them. They can keep needing on gear that isn't for their main spec and if they win it, they'll have stolen another piece of gear from someone who actually needs it. All I can do is ignore both of them so that they don't end up in my random group again, and queue for another random trollroic where I can hope to get ZA so my mace can possibly drop. I was seriously tempted to roll an alt on their server though, that's how mad I was.

I beg you, my readers, please don't ninja need items for your offspec when someone needs the item for their mainspec. With the Midsummer Fire Festival starting today, the Frost Lord Ahune will be available through the LFD tool and I know that people will be tempted to ninja need cloaks for their offspec. Please take a minute and think if needing on a cloak for your secondary spec is worth the aggravation and frustration that you are inflicting on someone who is queueing as their main spec and could use the upgrade. I know my words will probably fall on deaf ears for some people but I accept that. Maybe just one person will read this and change their mind about ninja needing.

With a quickness

Doing a short but quick blog post today because there are a few things I wanted to talk about but none of them is enough of a topic to dedicate a whole post to it. When combined though, there is enough to fill a blog post which is always a good thing. So stick around see you can learn a thing or two from your good old blogger friend Jed. First up is the two new heroics: Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman.

When ZA and ZG were announced as being two raids that were being reworked for level 85, there was a lot of uproar. Some people were on the side that it was a good thing because those two raids were great and they had good memories and some people were on the side that it was a horrible waste of time to do that instead of making new instances for us.

Which side am I on you may wonder? Well...I can see both sides of the argument but I do tend to lean towards the pro-ZA/ZG side. I raided both when they were each relevant and I had a lot of great experiences in each raid instance. I LOVED the look of some of the ZG weaponry/armor and I am really glad that I can see it once again. The fights while updated and slightly changed, manage to retain the feel of the original raid fights.

Are ZG/ZA cop outs and merely recycled content to keep us busy until we get a real content patch? I don't think so. Each instance isnt just the old raid instance with every mobs health/abilities increased to 85. There are a lot of changes to each fight to make it new while still feeling like the old fight. They have also added a quest chain that leads you to find out how ZG and it's many bosses were brought back. So in conclusion...I bring da voodoo and roll hax mon.

Next up:
If you are a caster class that doesn't use spirit as a primary stat and you find yourself in Zul'Gurub/Zul'Aman and caster gear with spirit on it drops AND the healer says that it is an upgrade for them...FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DON'T NEED ON THE PIECE! Especially if it is a boe and you are not going to wear it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111ONE!! I ran Zul'Gurub the other day with two guildees and the epic boe spirit cloak dropped for us. I was happy because it was an upgrade for me so I needed on it...as did the warlock in the group...and he won it. I was shocked and quickly explained that spirit is useless to warlocks now and that it was an upgrade for me and I asked if I could have it. His response? He was going to sell it and buy a cloak for himself and that it was boe so sorry for me.

Now being the nice and kind soul that I am, I informed him that I hoped he could heal himself because I sure as hell wasn't going to heal a ninja. After he died he whispered the tank(my GUILDEE) and tried snitching on me by telling him that I wasn't healing him. Obviously he didn't notice that 3 members of the group were from the same guild. We booted him, invited in another guildee and continued clearing the instance. Close to the last boss the Loot Gods were very kind to me and the cloak dropped again and this time all my guildees needed on it just in case the pug warrior decided he didn't like heals too. The tank won it and traded it to me and I gladly equipped it and enchanted it. Wherever that fail warlock is, I hope a rhino mistakes him for a campfire.

Last topic: Raid Progression!
This week my guild downed the Ascendant Council in Bastion of Twilight! Woots! This now makes our guild 7/12 in regular content and I couldn't be happier with how well we are doing. While we didn't one shot the council we only had a few wipes in the second phase before every got the fight better and then we moved into phase three easier and finally downed it. We are still recruiting by the way so if you are interested in raiding 10 mans with a fun loving guild that enjoys goofing around together and downing bosses, feel free to apply to join! We are always looking for good people who are level 85 and looking to have fun. Gear is nice to have but it isn't a requirement to join the guild. We do have stat minimums you have to meet before you can raid but you can meet and exceed those just by running a few heroics. Have questions about the guild and or joining? Leave a comment here, post on our forum, or even hit me up on twitter.

*Edit*
Forgot to mention that I have some of the best blog readers ever! In my last post I mentioned that no one had ever come to my blog by searching for the term "Jed is a sexy beast" and that had made me sad. Since that post at least one person has come to my blog by using that search term lol. So to whoever you are out there that was nice enough to do this for me...a big /hug goes out to you!
*End of Edit*
And that's it for now, I think I may try to do more frequent quick blogs like this instead of waiting for a big topic to come along. Enjoy!

Random Instances with Strangers

Lately I have been working on my getting my Gnome priest geared and ready to raid which means one thing...a lot of random instances. Sometimes I run with guildees who make the run much funner then it normally would but more often than not they are either pvping, in their own instances, or they secretly hate my priest because he is such a sexy gnome and they can't stand to be reminded that they are ugly and not Gnomes. That is my theory and I am sticking to it. Well when no one wants to run with me I do what I have been doing since Vanilla WoW...I pug an instance run. Some of you reading this are probably cringing at the thought of the looking for dungeon tool and there are times I can't blame you.

During my healing adventures I have run quick and painless instances and I have run horrible, disgusting, tear inducing instances. Now I have never healed on a priest in all the time that I have had a priest except for when I was spriesting it up and the real healer died forcing me to pop out of shadow and toss heals like my life depended on it...which more often than not it did. But that was on my human priest who has been shadow since day 1 of his existence. My Gnome priest was created to be a healer specifically. Why did I make another priest instead of just dual speccing my current priest? Well...I think Gnomes are awesome and if I can't have a Gnome Paladin, I might as well have a Gnome priest. 

Possible future Instances

This expansion has been out for 2 months now and most people have farmed heroics, downed raid bosses, ground out reputation with numerous factions, punched Nazi's goblins, used trunks to hide from explosions, ridden in submarines, worn octopus hats, ridden in tornadoes, stood in the fire, and many other activities. The question has to be asked...what's left to do? We know patch 4.1 will bring 2 new raids, one of which will be the Firelands. But what else should it bring? I think we need more 5 man instances. Burning Crusade brought 13 5 man instances at  launch and added one towards the tail end of it. Wrath launched with 12 5 mans and then patched in 4 along the way. This expansion launched with 7 NEW 5 man instances. Yes I know that most of the old vanilla instances were updated for newness and such but they are still OLD instances. We need more 5 man instances to keep us occupied.

Why do we need more 5 mans? Because half of this expansion is for characters under level 60. Yes you can go back to all the updated zones and redo the quests at 85 but to me theres a payoff missing for doing it. If you're leveling you get money, rep, xp for experiencing the newness. At 85 the money is usually not even enough to buy a stack of reagents, the xp gain does nothing at max level, and rep while nice if you're not exalted with a faction...may not be enough for some people. Blizzard has added so many things to help us level fast that we tend to skip complete zones while leveling and miss some of the new and interesting story lines.

With Heirlooms, dungeon quests and Guild XP gains, you barely get halfway through a zone before you are too high to really enjoy it. Yes you can always not wear heirlooms or run dungeons but that still doesn't address the fact that once you hit 60 you are no longer enjoying leveling because you're stuck in Outland with it's lame quests until you hit 68. And then you get to experience Northrend all over again except this time you can't abandon it at 78 for the new zones. You're stuck dinging 80 the old way. It's like the developers want to remind you that they have gotten much better at the game but they do this by making you go through old content.

Once you hit 85, most people are probably not going to go back through zones to quest and see the story lines. They will probably be too busy farming heroics for gear and rep which will lead them to over heroic themselves and burn out. There isnt a whole lot to do at 85 other then heroics and if you are really grinding them out to get geared you get bored of them real fast. We need new heroic instances to keep us entertained.



Update: So while I was busy with work and unable to post this yesterday, Blizzard decided to read my mind and release information about the new heroic 5 mans that they are adding. And by releasing information I mean it was all data mined by people who do things of that nature. So this can only lead me to believe that Blizzard is a fan of my work and has planted spy software on my computer to read what I write so they can make me happy. =D

How to succeed at Cataclysm Heroics

So I was thinking about my previous post about how much bad luck I was having running heroics at the time and like usual my mind started wandering all over the place. I eventually thought up a few things that puggers can do to ensure that their group succeeds or at least so that their run doesn't end in total failure. Keep reading after the break to find out how you too can succeed in heroics!

My request of Heroic Puggers

So I dinged 85 on my mage on Wednesday of last week and since then I've grinded the gear that I needed to run heroics. Now as soon as I was able to run heroics I queued up and waited to get into a run. I have yet to down more then 2 bosses in a heroic and that was pure luck that I even got past one boss. In each heroic I have noticed the same things happening: tanks don't mark targets for CC and just rush in, people don't understand the fights clearly, CC'ed mobs are broken by non-tanks and the tank doesn't pick them up in time so someone dies, healer ignores the group and only focuses on healing the tank so dps dies, dps stands in bad stuff and die, healer doesn't heal himself then stands in bad stuff and then dies.

People don't understand that in heroics even though the boss looks the same, their abilities are stronger and not quite the same. My request is a simple request and it is that people realize that they are playing Cataclysm and not Wrath so you can't just steamroll through content like you previously could. Please mark for CC, please don't break said CC, please don't stand in bad stuff and expect healers to keep you alive, please don't go emo and leave a group after one wipe especially if you were the cause of said wipe. Also just remember that just because you didn't CC when you did the instance in regular and lived does not mean that you can do the same in heroic mode.

All I want for Christmas is to run a heroic at least once and down the final boss. I don't even care that I get loot from any bosses along the way. Yes that is how frustrated I am about this situation. WTB Guildees getting their item score up faster so that I can run in guild groups and not worry about fail pugs. So how is everyone else enjoying heroics?

Cataclysmed!

So it has been two days since we had our little digital world rocked. Two days of a brave new world to explore and reshape as we see fit. Two days and yet I've managed to play only a few hours on my mage :(. Why have I not been able to get past 81 you may wonder. Well Tuesday night I got the worst toothache that I have ever had in my entire life. I'm talking about a toothache that left me unable to do anything but close my eyes and try to shut the pain out. Thankfully my fiance managed to get me an appointment with a dentist early yesterday morning and I was able to get in and have a wisdom tooth taken out so that I could come back next week and get a root canal done. Yeah I was not a happy camper.

Well yesterday was mostly spent eating soft crackers, soup, and drinking lots of water. When I felt up to it I played a little and got my mage up to 81 in between sleep breaks, pill breaks, and random world spinning headache breaks. I have managed to replace a large chunk of the my icc10 gear with greens and a few blues. My spell power and mastery have gone up while most of my other stats have gone down. So far I am loving this expansion! I know that I have already seen it in the beta and all but it is still fun and being able to play with my guildees makes it even more fun. I should hopefully be 85 by the end of the weekend but if I'm not then I'm not. I am going to take my time and enjoy this expansion and all of the awesome wonderful things that it has brought us.

Cataclysm Dungeons/Raids and You!

So...I'd like to start out by apologizing to all of my faithful blog readers for the long, long, long absence. Work has been beating me up so hard that by the time I get home I usually make it to my chair before falling asleep and when I do wake up I barely have the energy to even log on to WoW let alone to write a blog post. :( But anyway I am able to write something now so enjoy!

So by now everyone has heard how hard heroics are in the cataclysm beta and how cc will be king and all that. Well there are more changes to running heroics at 85 then just that so I figured I would write a little for you guys who aren't in the beta or aren't as in the know as others. In the current expansion you ding 80 and start running heroics right off the bat for badges and maybe a piece or two of gear so that you can start raiding. After you hit 80 you don't ever queue for a regular instance because the gear is not as great as anything that drops from heroics and you don't get any justice points/badges in them after doing the daily regular dungeon.

In cataclysm things are not like this at all. Yes the gear from heroics is still better then what you are going to be getting from regulars and it'll be tons better then what you are wearing at 85. So what's different you may ask? Well first off each instance has a minimum average gear level requirement and if you aren't at or above that number then you can't queue for those dungeons. The first two dungeons that you can actually queue for at 80 are going to be Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Neither of these has a minimum gear requirement so you can start queuing for them after you run to each instance entrance and "discover" the entrance area. Each instance in cata requires you to have run to the entrance and discover it before you can queue for it. I guess blizz got tired of people complaining about others who would die in an instance and release just to get lost trying to get back to the instance. Anyway back on topic, since these two dungeons have no gear level requirement you can run them over and over until you ding.

At 81 you can keep on queueing for these two instances and you unlock two new ones, the Vortex Pinnacle and the Stonecore. Now these two instances require you to have an average gear level. At 80 in full ICC10 gear you'll be sitting in the 251ish range and in full ICC25 gear you'll be around 270ish. You can check out what your gear level is now ingame since they added it on to your character screen in 4.0.1 so you don't need an addon to find out what your average gear ilevel is. If I remember correctly VP and Stonecore require a 272 score so you will have to start replacing at least a few pieces of gear with new cata gear to get in to these. Why the hell did they do this average ilevel crap? Well I guess it is because they don't want people to have grinded up to 85 and then attempt to run heroics in ICC gear that they started the expansion with.

When you unlock the next set of instances, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol'vir, they require 305 ilevel score. There is no way that you can get to 305 with all of your level 80 gear so expect to either run a lot of instances before this or to do A LOT of quests for gear rewards. Now if you do nothing but run intances...you have a chance of getting your gear level score to where it needs to be but I recommend mixing in some questing for gear as well as money.

Now you hit 85 and you are ready to queue for heroics...well just wait a second there. Heroics also have a minimum gear level...329. Now to get your gear level to this number you will have to farm regular instances to up your score. When raids were first opened on the beta servers new premades were released as well. The gear level for those premades was 350. This means that after running heroics and full heroic gear you will have a 350 gear level. You can probably start running raids slightly before this I am sure so I would say that mid 340s would probably be passable for raids. Once Cata comes along we'll know for sure what we'll need to raid. I hope this post helps at least one person prepare for Cata instancing. I am pretty sure my math is right but if someone has correct information please feel free to post it. =D

Signs that your instance run is going to fail

So I've been running a lot of randoms lately and I've come across a lot of bad instance groups. Most of the bad groups have very distinct characteristics that point to them being bad and that you should run for the hills if you end up in these groups:

1. If your healer has more health then your tank and both are in the proper spec/gear.

2. If your tank has more spell power then your healer...and your tank isn't a paladin.

3. If your healer disconnects after a pull, your tank pulls anyway and wipes but still insists on continuing without a healer.

4. If your tank insists that they know the instance and has run it countless times...yet they keep pulling unnecessary mobs and/or they get lost and lead the group into a dead end.

5. If your tank dies on the first pull and then states that they weren't in the right gear/spec which is why they died. They then proceed to switch into the right gear/spec...and die even faster on the exact same pull.

6. If your tank keeps needing on all the gear that drops and claims that it's an upgrade then upon inspecting them you realize that they are actually wearing the gear...even if the drops are cloth/leather.

7. If your tank/healer repeatedly rolls dench/pass on greens that are obvious upgrades and when you bring it up to them they get mad at you for "telling them how to play their class."

8. If your group is doing so bad that a hunter mentions that their pet can tank, your tank/healer agree wholeheartedly and want to try it out...even though the hunter isn't BM and they don't even have a tanking pet.

9. If your healer dies every trash pull and your tank yells at any cloth wearing class for not stepping up and healing when the healer died...even though the group consists of a lock and a mage.

10. If your healer is out dpsing everyone in the group without actually attempting to dps. For example: thorns, ret aura, or disc priests reflective damage.

If you've had one or more of the above...then I hope your repair bill was not too high. If anyone has some more signs that your group is doomed to fail please post them. The better prepared you are to recognize a fail group, the better your chances are of avoiding them.

The truth about Totems!

So I haven't been able to really post too much about my sexy shaman Rhommel lately because I've been so busy leveling him and also because of RL getting in the way. But I'm a mere 3 levels from being able to enjoy the wondrous, amazing, spectacular zones of Outland, with its amazing quest rewards that put anything I am wearing to shame! GO GO GRIND FASTER!!!!

Well in between the last shaman post and this one I've run...a lot of random dungeons...A LOT! I've been in some pretty fun groups with people who made the runs fun and I've been in groups with complete morons pulling everything by accident and wiping us for no reason other then the fact that they claimed to be bored.

Totems, Totems, Totems!

Hmm still working on a good title for blogs about my little shaman. I suppose I'll eventually stumble across a title I like. Well on to the meat of the matter: my shaman is the awesome. That is correct ladies and gentleman, my shaman has run his very first dungeon using the LFD tool. Honestly...it was a very interesting experience.

After waiting for like 15 minutes(I know, 15 whole minutes ew!) I finally got placed into a group. I zone in and find that I am in Ragefire Chasm with 4 other lowbies. The tank a paladin...could not for the life of him hold agro, the hunter ended up tanking more often then not, the healer ditched the group after a few pulls. We then requeued for another healer...who then joined the group for 10 seconds before ditching the party. After another healer did the same thing, we ended up with a shaman healer who apparently had taken a graveyard rez and therefore had rez sickness. Since his mana was reduced due to the sickness, he was constantly oom and bailed on the group after a few pulls...even after his sickness had gone away.

Finally we got a priest healer who was able to not only heal the pally "tank" but he was keeping up the hunter and his pet, who were doing the real tanking. We downed the demon boss and got the achievement for completing the instance but we were going to go kill the other boss for a chance at some more loot. The pally left the group and we 4 manned our way to the boss who went down faster then Toyota stock. I got a nifty belt from the lfd random reward bag and some xp. I had a good time honestly, even with the bad tank and constant stream of pugged healers.

And so concludes my first instance. It was definitely a good time and I will continue to use the LFD tool along my way to 80.