I did a little work on leveling my paladin this weekend. She’s working through 84. Sunday she got the Twilight Highlands opened and joined a quest for Crucible of Carnage. Since she’s going to be holy at max level I’m picking up int gear as it drops. Not a fan of ret; I either have no buttons to push or too many. Ugh.
So now and then I heal an instances to work on her xp, instead of questing. Sunday it had been a while since I’d healed but I queued with some guildies and we got Stonecore. I think we had three guildies but the tank was a pugger. I know Repgrind was along for sure.
First, the tank drops group. Ok. So we wait a bit and a minute or two later here comes another tank. He charges in. Thankfully Repgrind interrupts the guy who turns into a whirlwind because I don’t think the tank believed in interrupts. Or crowd control.
So we proceed through the dungeon. Now my standards for tanking are pretty high, because Reversion is an awesome tank, but even so this guy is not good. He’s not terrible, he holds aggro, but that’s it. He doesn’t use CC and he doesn’t communicate with us. We kill the first few bosses and proceed to Orzuk while killing as little trash as possible – which wipes us once and nearly wipes us another time. Sigh.
And then he sets up to pull Orzuk… without killing either of the trash packs closest to him. I ask in guild if it’s for real but decide to let him try – because I want to laugh. We start. He fails about half of the time to run far enough away from the pound thing. Sigh. And then it happens – the group we didn’t clear gets pulled, and we die.
We run back and kill that group and then Orzuk. Sigh. Why we couldn’t just do that at first…
The final fight I managed to kill a lot of the adds because I know how to make them stand in bad stuff. Not sure the tank did much of anything. Repgrind interrupted lots of Force Grips and it ended up being pretty easy to heal.
Fade to black.
Monday night Reversion was tanking for the other raid so Repgrind and I queued up together, again me on the baby holy pally and her on her warrior. This time we got Vortex Pinnacle. Once again the tank disappears almost as soon as we reach the instance – a dc this time. I was going to give him a minute but someone started a “kick” vote immediately. Five minutes later a new tank appears and we start.
“Gogogo” says the mage. Why must it be a mage who always does this sort of thing? I love mages, I was a mage before I was a healer, but man they seem to be the worst. And I pride myself on keeping mages alive!
“Gogogo” was about all he said and he said it every few minutes. We were making good time too! Then we killed a boss and jumped platforms…. and the mage sat there on the other platform… and sat…. and sat. Finally he moves. “Back,” he says, not having said he was going afk in the first place. “Gogogo”.
We keep going. We clear the first of the groups by the lightning triangle things, you know where there’s a set of steps up after them with star balls at the top. Well we’re recovering after the fight…. and Mr. Mage says “gogogo” and runs up and starts. Well I saw a dot moving and followed, then realized it was the mage and the other three party members were still downstairs. So I stopped healing him. The rest of the party comes and starts joining in. I tell Repgrind “DPS slower!” as the mage’s health creeps down… and down…. and then he dies. Victory! We kill the stars and I rez him. He doesn’t say anything…
We finish the trash pulls, go down, kill the other stars, and are looking at the boss. Mr. Mage is still upstairs. Finally he comes down and says “Gogogo” so we pull.
I was trying so hard to see if I could get him killed that I…. let myself die. Fortunately at that point the boss was almost dead and they finished without me. I think it demonstrated pretty clearly, though, that I can’t heal stupid. Not stupid tanks, not stupid mages, and not even myself when I’m stupid.
Hm, I know I took Kaify to Stonecore recently .. that might have been a heroic though. One day this weekend I did 4 randoms and got 4 Stonecore! In a row!! So they’ve kind of all blended together.
I do remember being sad that we couldn’t get one more guildy to go to VP with us so we could get guild rep.
It was Kaify! That’s right! His mage backed into the group the idiot didn’t pull. Was it just him or did we manage another person too?
Nah it was just him. I think we had a pug boomkin, didn’t we?
“I was trying so hard to see if I could get him killed that I…let myself die.”
Best thing ever.
/like
Stonecore is the bane of the 5 mans….kinda like Halls of Stone were…grrr hate Halls of Stone.
I never got that about Halls of Stone. I never could see why people hated it so much.
Its not the difficulty or anything…its that damned timed requirement fight…the one no matter what you had to wait and sit through…..that is what i hated.
It’s been almost 4 months since Cataclysm was released. I don’t find so crazy anymore to make a run without CC. Actually, as a tank, I tend not to use any CC in my heroic runs, but I ask the healer about it first.
And regarding not cleaning the trash previous to Orzuk, same argument. It’s been 4 months, most of the people know the instances and know that you have to stay away of those pulls. So I find it perfectly reasonable at this point. Although, as you were in normal difficulty, I would have cleared alll of them for the sake of XP.
I have yet to find a reason to not CC. Because of the AOE DPS nerfs almost every pack dies faster if you single target them anyway. So as long as you are only really taking them down 1 or 2 at a time the 3rd one and 4th one can be in CC. With StoneCore there are just SO many groups that have multiple things that can and should be interupted. Those trash packs near Orzuk do 90% less damage if you cc them (due to inturpts) and only take 5 or 10% longer to kill them. If I wanted to make something 90% harder to heal for the sake of going 10% faster I would tank in a dps spec.
I haven’t checked it empirically, but I just assume not to CC is a little faster, as you say yourself in your comment.
On the other hand, I agree with you in that healing becomes harder, but with minimum equipment it’s certainly doable. Another consideration I have thought of is the resting time for the healers. I mean, if you CC a group you may be saving time from waiting for the heal to rest later. So I agree it’s not a trivial matter.
Anyway, in general, I find it more fun to do it this way because it poses some challenge. If you can gain some time and some fun, the boredom of grinding the heroic content (luckily I’m done with it with my main char) is reduced.
Basically the tank gave us no room to move on Orzuk, and then moved the boss in such a way that we HAD to move to get away. If you are a good enough tank that you can do him without making your party move, skip the trash, otherwise, clear it.
The tank was level 82 and half as many hit points as me. I let him die twice and kept the party up while we finished the trash pull he’d failed to set up.
I agree with you, then. Good luck!
I remember healing a regular a few weeks ago right after Asymmetric hit 85 with one of Kerick’s alts. The tank was being a moron and finally at the end I got tired of it. He decided to pull all three packs of adds in front of Azil and he was only level 84 with crappy gear. I promptly cut off healz and let them nom his face real quick.
Some bad tanks just require the death penalty.
This is so wide open for comments that I just .. can’t … bring myself to do it.
I remember before cata came out.. i was healing H: VH on my druid for my random. Had 2 hunters in there that were clowning around tryin to be funny.. Every portal that opened, they would MD everything to me (being the healer). It was pretty funny because druid healing was so OP at the time.. they couldnt get me killed no matter how hard they tried.. (even with the boss being MD to me) RESTO4LIFE!
Heh. Fun times! You should have used cat/prowl just as they fired so they would agro themselves instead.
I personally think you can get through a dungeon just as fast, if not faster using cc. My two cents. If you’re that tired of fail pugs, wait for me! I’m not a great mage or spriest, but i really work hard not to be stupid :)
The most fun with MD was the bomb adds around Mimron in Ulduar. I remember once after downing him I MDed a few to this annoying shammy that kept saying “Pop your CDs” every 30sec for the entire fight. After his death I suggested that he should have popped some CDs to avoid dieing.
Rofl!
Was that who I think it was? I know the time you did that to That Person was one of the greatest moments in Crits raiding history.
Yep, thats the one. ;-)
I laughed sooo hard and got whispers about it for 10 minutes straight. There were even people outside the raid that couldn’t stop laughing.