The Joys of Random Pugging

Edit: Broken recount is broken.  So let’s address the rest of the fail, because that’s still perfectly valid.  :P

If you don’t know an instance, speak up.   Better you ask than have your healer screaming obscenities at you IRL.  I mean sure, I’ll wonder inwardly how the hell you don’t know NEXUS, but that’s better than calling you a douchenozzle becuase you’re making my life insanely difficult, right?  I’ve had several cases of DPS wiping groups because they didn’t know fights already (though it makes more sense in the new heroics).  Bwuh?  ASK, PEOPLE.  At least for the new heroics, I stop and ask if people know the fights first.  If you don’t answer and then wipe us with something stupid, I’m going to be pissy. 

If a boss has spell reflect, it behooves you to notice your own dots stacking up on you and STOP.  PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP.  If you keep taking a ton of damage, your healer is screaming JUMP at you in party, and you notice a stacking debuff?  Yeah.  Do it.  Please.

Speaking of heroic fails, my lovely tank healing, high crit, low haste build?  Yeah, it fucking sucks for heroics.  Oh the normal ones are fine, but if you get in the new ones with even a semi-derp derp group?  Yeah, kiss your sanity goodbye.  You can’t have low DPS in there.  You just can’t.  I know this because I tried.  And I couldn’t just group kick because they were guildies.  Bwuh.

I KNOW ALREADY!

Dear Tank,

I know you need heals.  I see that your green bar is less green than it should be.

I know you have aggro.  There is a red outline around the square with your name in it.

I know you have stacks of the debuff on you, there’s a wee little icon with a wee little number in it on my UI.

In other words, I KNOW, SHUT THE FUCK UP, CLEAR VENT FOR SHIT WE DON’T ALREADY KNOW. 

From now on, any time you say “heal me!” I will repond equally inanely with “TPS the boss!”

No love,
The person who assigned individual healers to each tank, and was assigned to you and doing nothing but heal you…no, really

P.S.,

This isn’t the first time I’ve written a letter just like this for you.  WTF?

How to PROPERLY Place Blame

I was sitting there innocently wasting time in Twitter instead of blogging or working on my Nano outline when lo, this post came to my attention.  I read it over and immediately noticed a massive problem: he was always blaming the wrong people.  I decided that it was my DUTY to set the record straight.

ETA: Don’t forget to check out other versions here and here.

Here, then, is a CORRECTED version of Mortigan’s list:

Amber’s Totally Fair and Unbiased Guide to Placing the Blame for Wipes

Cause of Wipe: The tank appears to be losing aggro left and right! 
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  First, cuss at them a lot and remind them to LOOK AT OMEN.  If they would just LOOK AT OMEN, then we wouldn’t have this problem.  CLEARLY, any and all aggro issues lay at the feet of the DPS.  I mean, they’re making it, right?  Totally their problem.  If that doesn’t work, take away the shamans weapons and make him DPS with mining picks.*

Cause of Wipe: The tank dies.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  Clearly, the tank died because the DPS took too long to kill the boss and the healer went OOM.

Cause of Wipe: Boss immediately ignores tank and 1-shots the DPSers.
Person to Blame:  DPS
Possible Solutions:  Uh, DON’T STAND THERE, tardbuckets.

Cause of Wipe: The healer dies.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  Misdirect onto the tanks correctly, hunters, or drop a frost trap!  AoE the adds down quicker! 

Cause of Wipe: The adds are killing everyone.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  If you KILLED the adds then they couldn’t kill  YOU.  See also: previous wipe.  Alternatively, if you weren’t standing in fires all the time, the healers would still have mana with which to heal your legitimate ailments.

Cause of Wipe: The DPS is too low, and the boss enrages.
Person to Blame:  …the DPS!
Possible Solutions:  MASH BUTTONS FASTER AND WITH LESS FAIL.

Cause of Wipe:  People don’t know the fights.
Person to Blame:  the DPS
Possible Solutions:  Tanking and healing are very similar from fight to fight.  CLEARLY, if the strats are being mucked up it’s the DPS’s fault, because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing!  Go read strats, nubs!

*We honestly did this back in Kara.

Emoquitting and You

1) Don’t do it.  There’s better ways to go out. 
2) Definitely don’t do it repetedly.
3) Especially not in the same guild.
4) The GM may keep inviting you back, but everyone else might well start to think you’re a bundle of loldrama.

/stares

And in more random WTFery, I honestly have these conversations with some of you folks:

Kyrilean:  yellow
 me:  what?
 me:  blue?  green?  purple?
 Kyrilean:  the phone goes “green”, i “pink” it up, and say “yellow”
 me:  …  WTF
Kyrilean:  a 2nd grade elementary teacher asks her class to use three words in a sentence: green, pink, and yellow
teacher says, “Susie, please use those three words in a sentence.”
Susie says, “My dress is green. My crayon is pink. The sun is yellow.”
“Very good,” says the teacher
me:  but that’s three sentences
 Kyrilean:  “Jose,” says the teacher, “please use those three words in a sentence.”
Jose thinks a moment.
And then says, “The phone goes green, I pink it up, and say yellow.”
you must say that last part with an accent btw
think Speedy Gonzalez :)
me:  you are so not PC
 Kyrilean:  I’m a mac
 me:  I’m blogging this
 Kyrilean:  shit

I will not share the god awful jokes I heard after that.   You’re welcome.

How2Ony

• Stay away from the whelp caves!
• NO REALLY, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE WHELP CAVES
• and the bosses tail…
• …and her head…
• …and deep breaths…
• …and the big adds when they make the burny circles…
• …and where the big adds SPAWN lest they come nom you when you are not a tank…
• …and the lava spouting cracks during phase three…
• Did I mention stay the fuck away from the whelp caves?!
• GET OUT OF THE LAVA POOL BY THE ENTRACE ZEREN!  FFS!

Search Term Game Time!

“lvling a paladin in caster gear”

If it’s cloth/leather caster gear, you sadden me.  GTFO.  Mail is…okay.  Ish.  But we’re a plate class, damn it.

“gridstatusignored”

Is great.

“wow does unrepaired effect hunter ranged”

Your bow DOES have durability, you know.

“squish hunter”

If they’re dumb or unlucky, they’re very squishy.  Mail just doesn’t seem very sturdy.

“paladin buffing annoying”

Yes, yes it is.  If you let a buff drop or they die ITS THE END OF THE WORLD IF IT’S NOT REAPPLIED INSTANTLY.

“how to heal voa as discpriest”

Pick a tank.

“tanks in vanilla wow”

Were all prot warriors!

“disc priest dont top meters”

When they do something is very, very wrong.  Trust me I’ve done it, and it was very very wrong.

“how to be a fucking amazing disc healer”

Strats varies, but I approve of this search.

“crayon nub”

…what?

“c’thun fuck”

Walk into C’thun’s room…spread out…NO NO SPRE-AAAH FUCK.

“i’m motherfucking retri paladin”

….   /edges away

“was it hard to tank vanilla wow”

We had to walk uphill in the snow both ways barefoot! 

(I don’t know, I healed)

“discipline priest healing totation macro”

I’ll assume to meant rotation.  You can’t MACRO healing like that, honey…and there is no healing rotation. 

“what is the hit cap for disc/holy dps pr”

…REALLY HIGH.

Healers Keep a Naughty List

Most healers have a “list”.  Actually, most healers have two lists.  One list consists of people we really like-the tank that is always watching our backs, the warlock who uses his demon as a Healer Guard, the hunter dropping ice traps at our feet, or even just the DPS who don’t stand in fires.  We like these people.  If they do something silly, they have an automatic Healer Aggro Dump.  Think of it as healer rep, if you will.  When you’re honored with a faction and accidentally take out a guard or two, it doesn’t ding you too badly.

The other list?  Well, that consists of the people we don’t like.  They’re the people who never run back after a wipe, the people who never sit down and eat as if your mana bar is their damn mage food, and the rogues who bitch every time they die in a whirlwind.  You merely walk into town and next thing you know, it’s like all the Light’s Hope Chapel guards have descended on your ass. 

In our guild, the worst ones are the people that end up with their names in “Healer Channels”.

LetHuntDie has been the official healing channel of BoO since someone had the mistake of letting me pick the name.  Hunt isn’t a bad kid-he’s a kick ass hunter and isn’t not that obnoxious towards the healers most of the time, but giving him hell as been a guild tradition since before I joined.  He canget really fucking annoying but I think that’s just a part of being 16.  Aspect of the Emo Kid QQ. 

NoHealsForNightghost started off as a joke-I’ll often declare a “new healing channel” when someone is especially annoying, unless of course it’s Hunt.  Then it’s just “CHANNEL NAME IS GO.”  But last night our guildie hit a new point of annoyance.

Hodir was a rough fight for us.  It was a scraping the bottom of the mana barrel fight, pots used, Hymns blown, fiend on cooldown, oh fuck oh fuck OH THANK GOD HE DIED fight.  The days of me being able to tie our resto shaman on meters as disc are gone-thank you, PoH and Penance nerfs.  The boss submitted and everyone stopped where they were-except me, because I perpetually strafe and jump like a space goat on crack.  Stopped, and…the debuff kept ticking.

Ticking.

Ticking and stacking on people whose health was already low.  Mikata said something on Vent about moving if you still had the debuff but it was a wee bit late.

Nightghost died.  Died, and then proceeded to make some angry remark on vent about how the healers couldn’t fucking heal him.  Consider it the equivalent of clicking “At War”. 

Cue the healers smacking their PTT keys, only stopped by the raid leader-Mr. Cranky Tank Josh-telling us to chill.  If by “chill” I mean “STFU OR I’LL REPLACE YOU WTF GUYS.”

This did not, of course, stop me  entirely…

CAN’T HEAL WHEN OOM

…nothing can stop my /rw abuse!  NOTHING!

Ahem.  But seriously-it’s a stacking debuff that you’re in complete control of, and healers can’t magically pull mana out of their asses at the end of a boss fight.  Fail on…whatever was to blame for it continuing to tick despite our victory, but whatever.  Even if it had been some other uncontrollable factor, if your healer is OOM and hasn’t been spamming GHeal on themselves all fight or something else stupid, what the fuck do you want them to do when they have no god damned mana?

Angrily blaming other people in a raid for shit that’s not their fault is bad, mmkay?

Angry outbursts on vent in generally aren’t all that great, actually.

Go figure.

This Lesson in Raiding brought to you by People Who Should Know Better.

Bill is so getting the shit beat out of him next time I see him.  By which I mean I’ll angrily hit him in the shoulder a few times and he’ll laugh at me, but it makes me feel better.

Hold on, the llama got out.

The Amber is displeased.  Why is the Amber displeased?  Because I hate people getting their panties in a twist and ragequitting without, you know, discussing shit.  When we post proposed changes on the officer forum and ask for your input, then we want your input.  We do NOT want you to hike up your skirts, scream that you don’t like us anymore, and leave. 

You want to do that, then fine, get your childish ass out of my mother fucking guild and good riddance.  If you truly don’t like the way things are going, why don’t you sit down and discuss it?  Concerned about new guild ranks diminishing the importance of people who don’t raid?  Well, how about some alternatives?  Where’s your ideas?  I want your ideas.  I don’t want your poorly typed out LJ-style flounce post.

We are not “ruining a social guild”.  We are trying to shape up a raiding guild.  Raiding, see that?  Raaaaiiiiidiiiiiing.  Raiding requires a certain amount of skill and discipline. Oh, and time investment.  Do we have people in the guild who can’t play worth a shit?  Well, yeah.  But they’re friends and we love them and they hang out and occasionally we shove purples at them from a farming run.  Do we have people in the guild who are skilled but can hardly run with us?  Yes, and we miss them terribly, and squee with joy every time they DO get the chance to join us.  Do we have good people who ARE here all the time, and are thus the raiding core?  ….why yes, yes we do.  We have and love all those kinds of people and we always have and we always will.  Do the casuals really need full bank access to our raiding flasks and a Core Raider title?  …no.

One of the most sissy of the flouncers actually told us that we didn’t have a good raiding core to build from.  Wait, what?  What the hell am I, chopped liver?  Kyr?  Zoja?  Mach?  Harryotter?  Huntres?  All those other people who do their job and do it well?  And since when were we a social guild?  What the fuck were we doing in Burning Crusade, having tea parties in SSC?  I don’t remember tea parties, I remember tanking some mother fucking bosses and winning some mother fucking loot in a MOTHER FUCKING RAIDING GUILD.

So excuse me, I’m going to go recruit some more RAIDERS for our RAIDING GUILD.  Then we are going to run some RAIDS.  During said RAIDS, we are going to be SOCIAL and make fun of Mikata because it’s easy, and Harryotter is going to die and we’ll lol at him, and Zoja is going to pick on Huntres, and it’ll be fun.  WHILE RAIDING. 

So congrats, two officers who seldom participated anyway.  Your previous contributions to the guild that once earned you your titles are missed, but shall no longer carry you through this expansion.  You flounced.  Now those of us who actually do the work these days will…uh…continue doing the work.  So uh…nothing has changed, really, except that we’ll proceed with shifting the guild ranks and bank permissions with fewer badly typed rage posts on the forums*.

 

*My rage posts involve capital letters and spell check.

No really? Amber gets sarcastic.

WTB Spellcheck

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Imagine all this taking place between a guy who sounds rather stoned, and officers who sound slightly sarcastic.

“I thought we were doing 25s…why aren’t we doing 25s?”

“‘Cause…we only had 16 sign ups?”

“Oh…why don’t people sign up?”

“…I don’t fucking know.”

“They should sign up!  Not signing up is…bad!”

“…”

We really have these conversations with guildies, people.  We really do. 

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lrn2soulshatter

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Also, it is really hard to heal when my cat is not only in my lap, but resting her paws on my boobs, kneading them, and trying to rub her cheek against my nose.  Yes HELLO Vesta.  I SEE you.  I kind of can’t MISS you. 

Sometimes, you die because I let you.  And sometimes, you die because my cat is letting me know my priorities in life are clearly fucked up…

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lol bye

We had a bunch of new recruits that joined en masse quit lately, because they “didn’t feel included.”  Well now!

I thought it would be beneficial to go over a few helpful ideas to help one and ones friends mesh when joining a larger guild as a group.

1) Don’t all sit in your own vent channel.  Mingle.
2) If you join a raiding guild to raid, you might want to try to sign up for raids. 
3) The message board is not there to look pretty. Use it.

If you proceed to isolate yourselves in your little clique, then you might not feel included. Just sayin’.  Also, when I say sign up for raids, I mean sign up for raids outside of out Naxx25 farm runs.  There’s this stuff called progression content?  That we mostly focus on?  Yeah…sign up for those.  Only two of those people up there ever signed up for Ulduar.  Two!  So all in all, we lost…very little…when they gquit.

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He will...bite...your shin?

They turned…my pet…into…a leper gnome…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Blizzard Gear Designers,

Did you know that male draenei are barrel chested?  And that female draenei like to stick out their boobs?   …you did?  I see.  Then uh…why didn’t you take this into account for the priest gear?

WTF

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@Arrens and cohorts:

Distinct Lack of Fail Angel on My Part

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in ur past messin' with ur mind

Bloggers are insane.

I could be sitting here researching my next strat post (coming soon!) but I’m not.  Instead, I’m abusing Google.  Why?  Well…the blogging community, specifically the World of Warcraft one, is full of crazy people.   Crazy, silly people.  This is well played out on Twitter, where several of us treat it like AIM and banter back and forth instead of doing work.

This blog, for example, is currently engaged in what is becoming a full out war.  My enemy?  Arrens.  For one thing, he likes shitty beer, and bad authors (Hemingway?  Go die in the rain).   More than that, though, he plays an UNDEAD ROGUE.

Any Alliance healer knows that undead rogues are the bane of their existence.  Filthy, filthy stunlocking zombies. 

So how, exactly, are we engaging in a war?

Search terms.

Today I have:
fail angel ambrosine
ambrosine is a fail angel
ambrosine won’t heal the goddamn rogue

And I’ve pinged his blog with such witty commentary as:
arrens caltrains is mean
arrens caltrains fail zombie
arrens caltrains is a noob

And you’re damned right I won’t heal the god damned rogue.  GET OUT OF THE FUCKING OUCHY SHIT AND YOU WON’T DIE.  See?  Easy!

Anyway.  What does one do during a war?  Why….call in reinforcements, of course!

GO FORTH AND SKEW HIS SEARCH RESULTS, MY MINIONS!

…okay, I’ll go back to writing “real” stuff now.

 

ETA:
“ambrosine should be an undead fail angel” – Horde AND holy?  HAHAHAHAHAHA fuck no.  Moocow, now, yes.  But not undead.  Or holy.   *shudders*
“arrens and ambrosyne sitting in a tree” – What the hell is wrong with you?
“ambrosine loves undead” – iiiiiiiiick.
“amber really is a dork” – Oh absolutely.  I don’t deny it.  I date an even bigger dork though, isn’t that scary?