Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Mutterings and Mumblings 2-3-09

If I join one more OS-25 PUG where there are several people who
a) don't know the fight,
b) don't know where the flippin' instance is, or
c) stare at the wall of fire coming at them instead of moving the f!#$ out of the way,
I might just take to the streets in a fit of rage.

There are too many melee DPS out there right now. Everytime I form a PUG, I get rogues, warriors, death knights, and ret paladins coming out of the woodwork to join. The worst part about that is all but the rogues want everything I want loot-wise. Titan's Grip and tons of death knights have flooded the two-hander market with buyers, so if I ever do run Naxx-25 in a PUG, I have no doubt that I will lose the roll for any weapon I want under an avalanche of fury warrior/death knight/other ret paladin rolls. I demand to know - where are all of these plate-wearers coming from, and why are they always in my raids rolling on my DPS loot?

I think I'm going to have to farm up some more gold and buy a Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Loatheb's Shadow is elusive and Fury of the Five Flights requires physical DPS to stop coming into the same OS-25 PUG's as me.

There aren't enough quality pick-up players on Malfurion. Every PUG I join either goes splat or wins in spite of itself. I want to start my own "regular" PUG group where I actually evaluate the players who come and establish a pool of public raiders that aren't morons, but my play-time is too erratic to do that. Ditto for joining another guild - play-time is too erratic to commit to a raid schedule.

Malygos doesn't drop anything of serious interest to me. I don't know why I bother with him.

My guildmates aren't online much outside of 25-man raid times - guild chat is a ghost town on off-nights. It's making my quest for a red proto-drake grind to a halt.

My death knight 2v2 partner disappeared 3-4 weeks ago. Anyone with information on his whereabouts, please contact me immediately.

On that note, I haven't PvP'ed much at all lately. The shine is starting to fade off Wintergrasp for me.

Under what circumstances can death knights dual-wield and actually be effective? Thus far, every death knight I've had tanking for me that opted for dual-wield, be them unholy or frost (haven't seen a blood DW DK), have been sorta low on the threat meter. I don't see the appeal of dual-wield on a DK, especially if low threat is the result.

I tried creating a favicon for E4AE, I couldn't get Blogger to recognize it. I don't know what I did wrong.

I've been fiddling with the formatting on the blog, I think I'm good for now. How's it look? I know I didn't change anything major - I like to tinker, small changes here and there. Probably one of the reasons Cathmor is an engineer, aside from the draw of Thorium Grenades back in the day.

That's all for now. Hope you have an easy maintenance day!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a note on your DW (hypothetical?) question about death knights. DW is really not a tank spec at this point in the game because they would have to stack too much hit and expertise to be viable. The available gear just doesn't support having that much hit, expertise, defense, and avoidance yet. DW, however, is very good as a dps spec against single targets and an excellent dps spec against packs.

Anonymous said...

I honestly don't understand why they let DKs dual weild in the first place...of course, this goes right in the same category with why they let fury warriors dw 2handers. I miss the days when you could join a group and be pretty certain about who's going to want what loot in an instance. Now with the dual specs coming out, litterally every piece of gear can be "needed" by every class outside of the the armor restrictions (plate not being wanted by a clothie). Class and game homogenization F..T..L.

Anonymous said...

Just to comment on "Anonymous"'s comment, even with dual specs coming out I think there will still be some courtesy for letting the players performing a certain role getting the gear first. Such as, the player currently tanking getting priority on tanking gear and so on for the other roles. In that regard, it would be no different than the way rolls work now. You will still have some assholes that will roll when they are expected to pass, but those guys have always been around.

Dorgol said...

There ARE a larger than expected number of melee DPS out there. Though in my case, I can't even count rogues in that group. I've joined heroic PuGs with 3 Paladins and Death Knight and their fun loving neighbor. It's really odd.

It does make me staying Holy a little easier to swallow, though. I have less competition for gear. :)

Anonymous said...

Totally agree, zillions of melee right now. Perhaps I picked the wrong expansion to go Ret...well, I'm generally in the top 5 DPS on boss attempts, and there's usually a market for GOOD melee.

Threw together two PUGs last night to get my Valor emblems from OS25 and Vault25 before the reset. Nothing dropped that I wanted, but I did get the emblems.

I've seen Fury of the Five Flights twice, but both times while I was still Prot. Alas. I, too, need a trinket to go with my Mirror.

Fedaykin98

Anonymous said...

BTW Josh, here's a thought I've been having lately. I think you've said that Ret probably wants to get the 4pc T7 bonus. The question then arises about which piece of T7.5 one would NOT wear if one wants to max his DPS.

Seems like the easiest way to go is to wear T7.5 shoulders, legs, chest, and gloves. The Spiked Titansteel Helm that we're all wearing is very easy to obtain, is worth more DPS than T7.5, and the T7.5 helm is the hardest piece to get. Plus the one helm that's a clear upgrade to Spiked Titansteel is pretty tough to get, much like most of the straight upgrades (where there are any) to the other tier pieces.

Any thoughts?

Fedaykin98

Shwitz44 said...

@Fedaykin98

For me, there's no doubt. Spiked Titansteel Helm + t7 x4. Replace the Spiked Titansteel with Obsidian Greathelm if you can down Sarth2D/Sarth3D.

Unknown said...

Been running into the same problem. I've been a Ret BE paladin, sense I rolled. Before I could join as DPS and not worry about losing out on loot to any other DPS in the group. Now, well I've usually got a DK and a fury warrior in my group to lose too. My rolls are less than stupendous. I don't complain too much if they are good at their class, and role. But lately, everyone I've ran with has been under par in my opinion. Really needs to be another long-ranged mail or cloth wearer class.

Shwitz44 said...

@Dustin

Warlocks, priests, and mages would disagree with you on the cloth point, especially with boomkins and ele shamans sniping their cloth spell gear.

There are 6 trees amongst 3 classes that use the same plate gear. There are 9 trees amongst 5 classes that use the same cloth gear, more (11 amongst 5) if you include the priest/druid healers too. In that respect, we've got it easy.

I think its more that everyone and their mother has a death knight, and all the warriors wanna play with Titan's Grip, so we're looking at a huge influx of plate DPS'ers. Regardless, its frustrating as hell.

Unknown said...

Agree completely, I wasn't so serious about the cloth comment, maybe more said in a fit of rage, I remember how horrible I used to feel rolling on cloth as a balance druid Pre-BC. And yes, the influx of Death Knights is primarily the problem.

But then, if you take into effect how much gear is actually available to us now, from both quest givers and instances, we have more choices than we ever did before. Some items can be swapped if you feel your hit rating is too low, or if you really want a bit more expertise for those trash pulls or movement based boss fights. And a lot more gear can be obtained through crafting - something that I've love. Spiked Titansteel Helm for instance.

I know there is a lot more content to be released in the upcoming months for Northrend, but it's pleasant to see these basic changes that help more casual players step into 10-man raid content and succeed.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about the bad luck with the dice rolls, I know all about bad dice rolls. I swear they take the short bus to my pocket before raids.

I feel really lucky though that I was luckily enough to join a guild, where for my first 4 weeks with them I was the only melee dps. Last week we did get a new rogue, but i like the company.

To tell you the truth, I really would have died alittle inside if a Titan grip warrior was with us when Death's Bite dropped the other day, no doubt I would have rolled a 8 or something. Keep up the awesome blog!

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