The Daily Quest: Revolving randoms
by Anne Stickney 
Jun 1st 2011 at 4:00PM
WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative, and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Joy is defined as an emotion of great, intense, exultant happiness, or the expression or manifestation of such feeling. However, in my world, joy is finding a WoW-themed Bon Jovi parody that's sung with absolute perfection. But let's move on to other things like PUGs, the Dungeon Finder, and the social obligations of WoW as collected from blogs here and there around the internet, shall we? ... While we listen to the killer soundtrack, and I try to figure out why I've never heard of this guy before.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
Joy is defined as an emotion of great, intense, exultant happiness, or the expression or manifestation of such feeling. However, in my world, joy is finding a WoW-themed Bon Jovi parody that's sung with absolute perfection. But let's move on to other things like PUGs, the Dungeon Finder, and the social obligations of WoW as collected from blogs here and there around the internet, shall we? ... While we listen to the killer soundtrack, and I try to figure out why I've never heard of this guy before.
- The Bossy Pally explains the various ins and outs of social contracts as they relate to WoW.
- Mortigan the Warlock ponders the mystifying revolving door properties of Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman.
- Spellbound wonders why players leveling up seem to be far more relaxed toward new players than those already max level.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bynde Jun 1st 2011 4:17PM
Anyone else see this?
Shows how evil buying gold can really be......
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1000850--chinese-prisoners-forced-to-play-video-games-to-mine-virtual-gold?bn=1
Mitawa Jun 1st 2011 9:17PM
Yep. Saw it here on May 26th.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/26/chinese-prisoners-forced-to-farm-gold/
Spider Jun 1st 2011 4:18PM
Lmao, that song is so well done. XD
Dave Jun 1st 2011 4:33PM
I have a brand new PUG song now. And a brand new BG song too! (click on the "this guy" link above).
Brilliant!
Jayjay Jun 2nd 2011 11:34AM
Yup _ the BG one is good too - and also the 'this ain't a BG (its a GD gear race)' - very awesome vocals from Dark. Thanks WI for 'discovering' these! /thumbs
GhostWhoWalks Jun 1st 2011 5:13PM
Mortigan's revolving door observations reminds me of the time I went into the new ZG during the first week of 4.1.
My group was smooth for the first few pulls, but then hit a brick wall at Venoxis; we'd barely get through one cycle before everyone else was dead, due in no small part to healers with tunnel vision who poured all of their spells into a tank while standing in acid. We went through about 7 or 8 people who left and were then replaced until I was the only one remaining from the original group. We finally managed to down Venoxis with a fairly solid group of a DK (myself) a Hunter, a Mage, a Warrior tank and a Pally healer. We pushed our way through the rest of the bosses slowly but steadily, learning the details of fights as we went along, and despite the healer being a bit scatter-brained we all talked and joked while advancing through the occasional death or wipe. All in all, about 2 hours.
Then we hit Jin'do. His first phase was simple to deal with, but the main phase was not. It was the complexity of the fight that killed us: people kept missing Body Slams, the tank kept dying when the berserker spirits started getting their damage stacks too high, the adds became too numerous for us to keep away from the healer, people kept getting sniped by Shadow Spikes, etc. The tank started getting impatient and the healer started whining that we weren't protecting her. Again, the revolving door spun into action; people leave, reque, new people join, we still wipe, people leave, reque, ad nauseum. I had dinner waiting for me, but I'd been in this dungeon all afternoon and I was determined to persist until I'd gotten my VP and the mace Jin'do drops. Over and over and over and over again we wipe. Over and over again we have to explain the fight to replacement party members. Over and over again they fall prey to the same pitfalls their predecessors had and then we rinse and repeat.
Finally, the entire party left and I was to reque on my own. My stomach growling, I was finally forced to throw up my hands and abandon the quest.
Final total:
4.5 hours spent
30 wipes
approx. 20 party members grouped with, including 3 Warrior tanks, 2 Paladin tanks, 2 Paladin healers, 3 Priests
0 VP
My runs have gotten better, fortunately. I've got gear strong enough to carry the DPS for some groups, I've learned the ins and outs of all the fights, I found a few tricks to make some parts easier, I've been grouped with similarly experienced players. But every now and then I'll get a group with an undergeared/inexperienced tank/healer, or something will go wrong, and we'll wipe a few times during the course of the run. And when they apologize for their mistakes, I can calmly tell them "don't worry about it, I've had worse".
Lipstick Jun 1st 2011 5:42PM
So much healer hate.. so little time.
In the beginning those dungeons were incredibly difficult to heal. They're still no walk in the park if you get a group who doesn't know what's up. The biggest reason why healers had such a rough time in the beginning is they simply couldn't heal through people not moving out of stuff. And since people were so slow to react moving out of stuff.. it was just a disaster. Spirit link for example... people need to spread the second they get it.. the closer they are together when it goes boom the more damage it does to them, and to everyone around them. It's basically a healer's worse nightmare. Certain classes have minimal aoe heal abilities. I've been in runs where the same player gets targeted by spirit link twice in a row, and there is almost no saving 'em from that. You just can't heal 'em up to a healthy enough level before the next one.
It might just be me, but it seems like cata has increased the animosity dps and healers have amongst each other.
GhostWhoWalks Jun 1st 2011 7:32PM
You misunderstand, I wasn't specifically blaming the healers I was grouped with, everyone was having a hard time.
The initial healers I had were definitely bad, they were always the first to die during our attempts and would often die a second time after I'd battle rezzed them before anyone else bit it.
The paladin healer I'd had for most of the run herself admitted that she wasn't paying full attention and would often get caught in some form of AoE or be too slow to react to save someone from dying. When we struggled against Jin'do, she really did start whining about the lack of protection despite the fact that all of the group's DPS was focused around stopping adds. She wasn't great, but given that she was better than the previous healers we'd had, I could hardly complain.
In general, I recognize the difficult position healers are in and try to help out where I can. The initial difficulties people have had in ZG/ZA is because they are really healer-intensive dungeons, with lots of damage that's either difficult or impossible to prevent. I'll protect myself with cooldowns, manage my own health with Death Strike, heal allies between fights with bandages, Cannibalize when possible, all to ensure that the healer wastes as little time on me and the other DPS as possible. But sometimes it's not enough. We all have to work together, but when you don't have any DPS with healing offspecs, the healer really needs to be at the top of their game in order for the group as a whole to succeed.
Just the other day, I had a Priest healer in my ZG run decked out in a mix of tier 1 heroic and PvP gear, and he was still better than all the healers I had on that memorable run because he brought his A game to every fight. It was a rough run because I was the only one who'd actually run ZG before, but we all worked as a team and helped each other out and we ended up with a fairly smooth full clear.
Nadia Jun 1st 2011 5:14PM
Why doesn't WoW Moviewatch find anything this good?
Anne Stickney Jun 1st 2011 5:22PM
This isn't technically a machinima, as there's no video with it, so it's not really a Moviewatch thing. It is, however, a World of WarCrafts thing, and I'm working on setting that one up. :)
Eirik Jun 1st 2011 5:15PM
Referring to Mortigan's blog, I have only three times entered Zulroics.
One ZA run: in progress, started on Dragonhawk, killed that and Lynx. Three hours after entering, and on third wipe to Eagle, it got too late in the evening, and I had to drop out.
First ZG run: in progress, started on Zanzil. Many many wipes, we finally got him down. Went on to Jin'do, who broke us. Again, it got entirely too late to continue.
Second ZG run: full guild group, fresh run. Wiped once on the green maze guy, got the raptor guy and the archaeology guy down first try. Then we got to the cat lady. And we tried, and we tried. Maybe I just didn't "get" the encounter. Maybe we just had too many people get caught by the "wave of awesome damage" too many time. But we just couldn't get past her. We WERE highly amused by the temple rats, wiggling in our hands as we ate.
Simply confirmed my earlier take: If I want the points, do "normal" cata heroics. If I want special loot, and even more challenging encounters, go Zulroic. ... but don't expect to finish.
Ominous Jun 1st 2011 5:28PM
Even if you don't like Bon Jovi, that's an excellent cover / version.
It deserves to have a machinima expert create some dynamic visuals for it.
JCinDE Jun 1st 2011 5:30PM
Perhaps I could shed a little light on the ZG/ZA revolving door. Once you hit ilvl 346, the game selects Random Zandalari Heroic as default. Speaking only for myself, when I queue as healer, no way in hell am I going to subject myself to the random LFG morons in those instances. Just isn't worth it. So if I queue up, forgetting to either switch my role from healer to DPS or the dungeon selection from Zandalari to Cataclysm Heroic then I'm going to bail as soon as it dumps me in either of those as a healer.
I've been playing a healer as main for over five years. I have no desire to get kicked out of ZG because people blow each other up on Venoxis and blame me for not healing them through it. I'll save those two dungeons for guild runs.
Lipstick Jun 1st 2011 5:49PM
While I understand your sentiment, I think this is a terrible idea. Learning to heal those dungeons in pugs -- and heal them successfully is a challenge, and even after 3.5 years of playing it had at least a little something to teach me about ways to improve my own performance. Running challenging content only with your guild -- who allows you to face roll through it .. never makes you grow or change as a player.
There is something truly rewarding about "amazing heals" from someone who doesn't know you. I think sometimes it's easy to forget how well you do your job, when you run with the same people all the time. They see you every day, they expect you to be fabulous.
If nothing else that place is incredibly useful of kicking anyone who doesn't use their mana cool downs effectively out of that habit quickly. It forces you to play intelligently.
I encourage you to give it another go.
JCinDE Jun 1st 2011 6:05PM
You paint a rather rosier picture of pugs than I've ever seen in practice. People regularly get themselves killed by damage that cannot possibly be healed through. Encounter mechanics are designed around avoiding avoidable damage. It used to be that way on the first tier of Cataclysm heroics, but after a handful of nerfs and enough time for most people to learn what not to stand in, things got better. Zandarli heroics are new. They haven't been nerfed and too many people don't know the fights. So they die to avoidable, unhealable damage then turn around and kick the healer from the group. I've been there and done that. I've got better things to do.
kaosgrace Jun 2nd 2011 12:00AM
I think I'm in love with this song. Why have I not found this person on Youtube before?
Corath Jun 2nd 2011 1:12AM
Pugs are wonderful, aren't they? My priest recently hit 85 and is working on heroics now, so I'm getting that wonderful feeling from a healing perspective this time. Yay?
On that note, the newest post up at Corath's Blog (http://corath.wordpress.com) is all about my priest's journey and the new challenges now that I'm at 85.
http://corath.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/moving-on-up/
Enjoy!
Grudaddy Jun 2nd 2011 9:45AM
Huzzah for Darkpippi! I have the pleasure of being guilded with him as well, loads of great songs, and an absolute riot in vent with his myriad impressions.