Greedy Goblin

Friday, August 27, 2010

That was terrible. Let's kill Halion instead!

On Tuesday, Treeston organized an Ulduar 25 to complete his mace. Half the raid is from the guild, the other is from trade chat. I suggested to do FL+4 since it's an easy achievement spam and will motivate the people later. Also it's a great fight, even though we overgear it terribly.

We wiped 5 times on it, and out of the wipes just one was a real attempt. The other 4 were ninja-pulls. The raid leader was explained the fight, and some moron got bored, and without a word just pulled. 4 times. I declared openly that this raid has no chance with such trash and the raid disbanded. And these were filtered people, the gemless-enchantless "Rofldots" class people were rejected.

OK: "raiding anything but ICC with trade chat people is bad idea" is not news to anyone. In ICC they at least want some gear and fear of being kicked (= saved without loot), in other places they just don't give a damn.

However after this disaster we went to Halion for an "easy run" to do something good after wasting about an hour with such idiots. Needless to say that Halion did not die. Next day I put him on the calendar, organized a raid and after several wipes:

As you can see I did not bring the hard mode core to Halion. What was the difference?

On Tuesday we went there with progression mentality. Halion is the latest raid of the game, with several new mechanic (twilight cutter, corporeality, pulling-pushing AoE). We expected to wipe and to improve. And that's what we did. We changed the groups (shadow, fire), made macros, changed the strategy (left the fire tank outside, so Halion didn't kill fire-team if the tank was blocked from the portal by cutter), and finally he hit the ground. As revenge-beyond-the-grave he dropped two items that we couldn't use for anything but disenchant.

On Monday we went in with the same mentality we have when Patchwerk hands over 5 frost badges. We did not want to wipe and when we did, we got upset instead of evaluating the problems and try again. Mistakes multiplied instead of decreased.

What I've learned: you can't go to current content without progression mentality. You must be ready to wipe, to adapt, to learn. If you are not, go do some 5-mans or log off!

Also, I've seen "we killed him several times FFS!". No, we did not!. the picture shows that it was firstkill for half the raid, including a tank. Considering the guild "we" is social and therefore absolutely wrong. The team that killed Halion on the first day he was available to us were 10 guildmembers. But that does not mean that any 10 guildmembers did it or can do it. If there is just one person who did not do it, or did it in other role, you must approach with progression mentality (unless the content is a joke). 31% of the guilds killed Halion! He is current content, hard content. He can be done, and can be done with new people. Even with less geared people. But not with "let's just zerg it and loot" people, no matter how good they are.
-----------------------------

Daniel found this wonderful specimen of the M&S crowd:


41 comments:

Eenheid said...

I figured out that the person who sent in the screenshot wasn't supposed to be the moron (who would send in a shot of himself being a moron?) but I am still a bit lost as to why this guy is a moron.

Can fury stack Sunder easily? Is Sunder a really basic aspect of warrior dpsing/being a warrior in general? How do we know that it wasn't a warrior tank -- and has anyone ever told this guy to stack Sunder?

Anonymous said...

About the Moron of the day... another great example of how names help to discover M&S. It's like a rule - "The more special characters or spelling mistakes the name has or the 'cooler' it sounds, the worse is the person." Just confirmed this some days ago when Blackworrier, the metaless, enchantless hunter, wanted to join our ToC25.

And it's always funny to see that if a raid goes on well and you look through the names of present people, you won't see any ´`^ or the like.

Anonymous said...

"I figured out that the person who sent in the screenshot wasn't supposed to be the moron (who would send in a shot of himself being a moron?) but I am still a bit lost as to why this guy is a moron.

Can fury stack Sunder easily? Is Sunder a really basic aspect of warrior dpsing/being a warrior in general? How do we know that it wasn't a warrior tank -- and has anyone ever told this guy to stack Sunder?"

Fury warriors shouldn't have too hard a time of it, their rotation is to keep two buttons on cooldown (one 6 seconds, the other 8) and occasional randomized instant slams. There's using heroic strike to bleed off excess rage, but it's off the global cooldown, shouldn't be difficult to find a GCD to refresh sunder every 30 seconds.

Sunder is pretty heavily ingrained as a tank ability throughout vanilla and TBC, so I don't think he's necessarily dumb for not knowing to adjust for raid composition, but that attitude is pretty terrible.

Anonymous said...

@Anom As with any rule, be careful to note that exceptions do exist (especially so on an RP realm)

For example, my DK is named Duáththandá, with an entire TWO special characters.

Does that mean i'm a drooling retard? i sure as hell hope not.

Squishalot said...

3 comments about the moron (noting that the sender himself isn't far from being one either, based on his people skills), and nothing on the text itself?

The reason why PuGs have a 'Patchwerk' feel to it is because they're generally perceived as such. You want progression? Join a progression guild.

Joining a trade PuG is most commonly associated with 'pst GS + achv' - the implication is, the people they want are those who have downed the boss(es), and can just waltz in, pick up the frost emblems and a couple of upgrades, and waltz out.

I can see that's how your Ulduar 25 run panned out. But who did you bring to your Halion wipes?

Anonymous said...

Uh I am on the screenshot (not the second one, the Halion kill).
I just have to say, that I personally had fun "doing" Halion, although we had a couple of fails. Me even caused a whipe, when I used Killing Spree right before Cutter. But well that's what the fine is for.
I would say, that as the undergeared project showed, that even with less geared characters it is very much possible to defeat a boss, which is supposed to be the last tier.
Of course the main positions in this 10man where experienced with the fight, especially the healers.
But I for myself had seen the fight the first time. When I got the Halion kill, I haven't even seen anything in ICC. I sure have seen a video or two of the fight and knew the mechanics, so it was quite easy to get the hang of it, and it's not like this drake is overly complex.
Well just to say, I enjoyed doing this.

caerphoto said...

Yeah like Anon said, Fury has plenty of free GCDs to use on Sunder, so there's no excuse.

In fact, since it's reducing the target's armour, it increases the warrior's (and any other physical damage class's) DPS, so it'd be silly not to apply it.

Ulv said...

This is absolutely true and it's opposite position truly defines M&S.

We've been working on 10-man ICC heroic modes in guild and made it to 11/12. One achievement off Glory. It's only possible with a group that accepts wiping is the only way to improve on hard content.

While you always strive for the bosskill as the ultimate mark of progress a few extra % off the health before a wipe really marks progress.

I suspect Cata will move things a litte further back towards skill being required in raiding which might reduce the drooling masses pugging beyond their capabilities!

Denethal said...

Things like applying sunder armor is not an obvious thing you'll incorporate into your raid rotation of abilities.

If you look at the description of sunder armor, it clearly states that it's a high threat attack and that your attackpower increases the threat caused by it.

And during leveling, there's aboslutely NO indication that you should ever use it, especially now that most people level purely through the LFG tool, which allows them to be social in the cities.

The whole message was an insult to the warrior's knowledge of his own class. There was absolutely no explanation as to why he should apply sunder armor, so the warrior must probably have thought that he was told to activily commit suicide by some jackass looking to point fingers.

There's a difference in constructive feedback and insulting feedbacks. This was a case of the latter.

Anonymous said...

"The more special characters or spelling mistakes the name has or the 'cooler' it sounds, the worse is the person."

While in some cases this can be true, I think it is a pretty bad rule to follow. On the EU servers, there are many people whose character names are using the special characters correctly as part of their name as it is a part of their language. This especially seems to be the case with the Nordic countries.

Furthermore, I know of several good, desired players who have special characters in their names merely because they wished to keep their old character name when they transferred to another server (but it was unavailable on the destination server).

Normally though the Déáthkníghts don't follow this rule.

Anonymous said...

Mostly agree with Denethal on this one. While it should be 'obvious' that Sunder is a DPS increase, it isn't always. A lot of Warriors who don't know otherwise just think it's a Tank ability.

If the guy who sent it in had said:

"Hey, I noticed you weren't putting Sunder Armor up. If you use Sunder Armor when Bloodthirst and Whirlwind are on CD then the boss has less armor. Less armor = you do more DPS. If you keep Sunder up you'll do about 7-10% more damage."

Who is the most moronic? The guy who doesn't know to put Sunder up, or the guy who doesn't bother explaining why it should be up and thus gets his way?

Shadowstep -us-bloodhoof said...

No excuse for warrior to not use sunder if there is no warrior tank. Same thing with rogues, if there is no warrior you should be exposing.

Anonymous said...

There is no excuse to not knowing about your class' ability, and even less for not adapting when someone points out that.

Dredscott said...

Unless I miss read your post I believe Treeston organized the raid and therefore he was the raid leader.

"I suggested to do FL+4 since it's an easy achievement spam and will motivate the people later."

Either being or not being the raid leader this was a very poor suggestion with far too much personal motivation behind it. "...even though we overgear it terribly." Any hard mode of any size that is done the raid leader should count of the guild bearing 100% of the work load. If the pugs perform well and chip in an extra 15% that is great but don't count on them for 15%. If someone randomly pulls for the 4th time if just says even more strongly to me that group was not capable.

"I declared openly that this raid has no chance with such trash and the raid disbanded." As the person who suggested the idea AND as the person who was not the raid leader you were way out of line. All this accomplished was to undermine Treeston and I believe this is what led to your failure in RS not non-progession mentality.

Wilson said...

As usual, I'm a little confused. Treeston organized the raid, but Gevlon who suggested going for a hard mode achievement and who also called the raid. So, who exactly was leading? Still wondering when we'll see a second leader actually emerge, and make decisions that don't happen to coincide with what Gevlon wants. Bummer about the mace, though.

Denethal said...

@Shadowstep: But if noone explains to the warrior that the threat-increase won't be an issue in raid environment, how is he to find that out if he have had no need to go look at external sources for his class?

Accidentally putting his sunder on the bar and then accidentally use it?

If he had been told "Hey, use sunder armor on the boss. The threat increase will be negligible, so you won't pull aggro, but you'll do a lot more damage", would he have responded the same way?

Anonymous said...

There's nothing wrong with expecting someone to know what they're supposed to be doing. It's common knowledge that Fury/Arms warriors should be stacking sunders when there's no prot warrior in the raid or another class with an equivalent armor debuff. This has been the rule since Vanilla. The guy obviously doesn't know shit about his class.

Wilson said...

"so it'd be silly not to apply it."

"No excuse for warrior to not use sunder if there is no warrior tank. Same thing with rogues, if there is no warrior you should be exposing."


One is tempted to quote our esteemed and erudite colleague Nighthammer's last line to these gentlemen, but I shall refrain. Instead, I will point out that sunder is not just like expose armor. It includes a very high degree of threat - remember the whole "wait for sunders" concept? If I know the tank, and know that they know their job, sure I'll throw some sunders in there. But a random tank in some pug? Especially a DK? Screw that. Just last night Ingvar violated my poor shammy in a manner most foul because the DK tank was utterly clueless about how to hold aggro. And she was just doing her standard rotation. You think my warrior needs to always be piling on the threat with every random non-warrior tank? pffft.

Shannon Fowler said...

While it should be 'obvious' that Sunder is a DPS increase, it isn't always.

Yet I imagine it's noted and discussed at length in the fury warrior thread on Elitest Jerks... and he's a total noob and has never heard of EJ, I just looked at the WoW US Warrior forums, there is a detailed 'How to Fury' thread that talks about Sunder Armor at length.

This is a case of an idiot not doing basic research. Stop making excuses for him.

Yaggle said...

The guy isn't a moron because he was not using sunder armor, he's a moron because even after being told there was no sunder armor and that the tank was a DK so he(DPS warrior) should sunder, he basically said no. Only other choice is a hunter worm pet, but you only do that if there are no warriors since it nerfs the hunter's dps way more than a warrior using rage on sunder. Anyways that's just my non-raider moronic take on that, I may be wrong.

Shadowstep -us-bloodhoof said...

@Denethal You mean I shouldn't expect someone to research and know their class. Should I be expected to explain the proper rotation to the character too?
When the player is told that you are supposed to put sunder up if there are no warrior tanks even if he dps he could have asked why. But he didn't, he instead decided to buck at the more knowledgeable players suggestion and insist that he wasn't a tank.
You can tell the player that it will have a nominal affect on your threat and dps but will increase the raids dps. But it shouldn't be the players responsibility to hold Nighthammer's hand. From what I understand, hand-holding is the exact reason Gelvon runs the pug ventless.
No offense, but I do not feel that failure to research your class is an excuse for ignorance.

Unknown said...

@Wilson

Have you actually played a DK tank? They have by far the best single target threat in the game. There is no way any dps could possibly pull a boss off of a DK tank who knows what they are doing.

That guy should have been debuffing. And he should have gotten a suspension or ban for that language.

Shadowstep -us-bloodhoof said...

also @ wilson
Managing your threat and watching omen is part of being dps its not just mashing buttons and following a rotation. I will admit some tanks are so fail that you can take aggro auto attacking, or your pet can take aggro, hell healers can take aggro, but you should know when to let up and let the tank get control.
And yes I know sunder has the added threat mechanic and rogues also have several methods to negate/limit threat. So maybe no excuse isn't the best wording, perhaps little to no excuse is a better option. Just like there is little to no reason with 4pc tier 10 that I shouldn't be intelligently using tricks of the trade.

Anonymous said...

Besides, there is a little thing called a THREAT METER. You can kind, oh, look at it and know if you are generating too much threat. Kinda hard concept, you know...

Treeston said...

I was the raid leader, I formed the raid, I inspected. FL+4 was not only Glotan's suggestion, but the wish of most of the guildies in said run. I did not agree with it fearing that it would lead to wipes and the raid crashing (which it did), but in the end agreed to it under the premise that "we only do one attempt, then it's normal".

After said attempt, Gevlon decided to what I can only describe as ragequit ("I will never again with trade trash"). Most of the guildies left as he announced Halion, and I was left with the ruins of a raid.

On an unrelated note, I organized a successful ICC25 with members from trade on Wednesday.

Anonymous said...

the argument is not over he is a good player or not - he is not - but the ability clearly states a high amount of threat - something he has been told repeatedly, i assume, is bad.
so i´m quite understanding that he would be flabbergasted to the idea to apply sunder.
so the problem is the senders /w that are quite rude without any enlightenment, while the im a nob defense rightly goes down the drain at 80, in this specific instance i think a rational explanation would be in order before he qualifies as moron of the day.

Bristal said...

The screenshot poster was a dikwad picking a fight, plain and simple. He was likely pissed at a PuG's 3rd wipe and chose a random class with whom he was familiar to unload on.

And he picked a fight with someone who didn't just bend over and do what he was told. Shocking.

Most people will argue against any seemingly helpful suggestion about their poor performance if approached abruptly, and/or when annoyed.

The point isn't about helping. It's about pointing out that he sucks.

And he argued. Wow, he must really be stupid.

Anonymous said...

I play a fury warrior and I'm always in the top 2 positions on the damage table and on the threat table, in some bosses like HLDW I have to often (that's like every 20 seconds or so) completely stop attacking the boss to drop threat. If I apply sunders I immediatly pull aggro. In this case it would be necessary to know how good the fury warrior is and how good his gear is. Remember that a very well geared fury warrior makes very high damage.

For some fights that extra 7-10% DPS is not necessary as the group is never even near of getting to the enrage timer, and stealing aggro from the tanks is automatically a wipe.

Anonymous said...

To all these people arguing that sundering as a fury warrior is counter-intuitive because of the +threat. Does that also mean it would be acceptable to not use heroic strike ? Because that actually does a TON more threat than sunder armor.

There is NO excuse for not knowing your class and role when you raid.

Anonymous said...

I really dislike how each moron picture inevitably has a following of people making excuses for the moron.

I'm talking about the "sunder has high threat" people. Heroic strike does much higher threat than sunder and I bet the fury warrior was using that.

It is not ridiculous to expect a DPS warrior to know the effect sunder armor has on damage done. Not knowing your class abilities is equivalent to a DK with spell power gems.

Anonymous said...

Personally, I don't really give a damn about DPS in PUGs. That's the reason I don't sunder as fury in them.

To be accurate, I only pug weeklies and if they fail, there's no way it's because I didn't sunder.

More reasons to leave pugs after one wipe I guess.

Wilson said...

@SaSSafraS -

I do on occasion tank with my DK, although it's not my specialty. And yes, when I do, I have little trouble an adequate amount of threat. Unfortunately, while some DK tanks are great and most are adequate, some are terribad, and couldn't hold aggro off a kitten. If I don't know in advance which my tank is, I'm going to assume terribad until shown otherwise.

Should he be banned? Maybe. I really don't care about him one way or another.

@Shadowstep-
So you now you are saying it is okay to adjust your attacks based on the situation, and that it is not a "no excuses" must-always-use spell after all? So glad we are in agreement.

@Treeston-
Sorry to hear it went down like that. I think you deserved better.

@Anon 20:57-
My blue mace-wielding, gets played once every few weeks fury warrior wishes she had your gear.

@Anon 21:28-
Heroic strike generates a heap more damage than sunder. If you have to prioritize (and sometimes you do), then you go with what gives you the most bang (damage) for the buck (threat). Sunder is at the bottom of that list.

Mick said...

In the case, the M&S is the arrogant cok who sent in the ss, rather then the target. His combative, arrogant tells were only going to get one response from a total stranger. If I had of been in the target's position, my response would of been more extreme, along the lines of "thanks for the advice, no feck off and die you arrogant kent"

Pro-tip champ, try this kind of comment on the train next time you ride one and see how far you get.

Anonymous said...

About special characters:
Yes, in Scandinavia we use special characters of a and o(å, ä, ö, etc).

I also think that French is a language with a lot of ´ above the characters? In my battlegroup we have been mixed with French realms, and there are more ´-names than normal names. Are they all M&S, or whatever you want to call it?

I despite special character names however. There are exceptions tho for me. In lores such as Lord of the Rings names with ´ above o's and i's are pretty common I think.
I mean... there's a difference between Lothaíen and Lóthaíéñ. :P I hate when I have to search for someone with the latter in /who...

Eenheid said...

Gevlon, can you respond to the person who said you 'basically ragequit'? It seems pretty true, or am I wrong?

Treeston said...

Eenheid, one of the advantages is that we don't have to invite anybody to our raids that we don't want - that includes the guild leader.

My lesson was that the goblin is getting no more invites to content where wipes and stupidity are likely (everything earlier than ICC without a full guild group).

Vinnz said...

To the anonymous wondering about special characters in French:

We can have many accents on vowels, and due to our keyboard layout, we can type a few very easily (1 keystroke): é è ç à ù
and others almost as easily (2 or 3 keystrokes): ^ or ¨ with vowels (eg: ê â î ï ü...) and ã, õ.

However most of these are uncommon (if used at all) in the natural language.

You can expect names with only a few accents (especially on é) to be genuine (ie the playable race "Forsaken" translates to "réprouvés"). On the other hand, you can expect ones with loads of special characters to be dubious (or M&S to follow the tradition of this blog); it's just easier to show how "creative" you can be with accents on our keyboards. Légôlàs or ârthàs are so easy to type...

nightgerbil said...

To all the people defending nighthammer, are you ok with this?

to nightgerbil: keep huntersmark up
from ng : ?? I look like a marksman?

to ng : there wasnt a hunters mark up
to ng: without an mm in the raid the other hunters have to keep one up.

from ng: I am survival...
to ng : keep a hunters mark up
from ng: suk my cok.

After all if I put my hunters mark up it will increase my threat on the boss from all the extra damage I cause, it really does screw up my rotation having to use a gcd on a mark, after all i start exy shot, serpy sting, barrow aimed then exy shot is up again. If the shammy hit bloddlust I pop my rapid fire off and squeese off some near instant steady shots. about this time LnL will have procced and I am spitting out exy shots like they are going out of fashion: you want me to break off that dps to do someelses job? really? then I bet you'll complain about my dps not beating the mage huh?

Oh and besides was prob just a boring hc where i couldnt be arsed (read I am a slacker)OR a tank I never met before who i assumed couldn't hold threat of me without hurting my dps by having to fdeath.

So you see no one should call me a huntard for not using a hunters mark. right guys?

Artavur said...

@ Nightgerbil: who would even care about the dps you do in a "boring hc where you can't be arsed" ? You don't even have to use hunter's mark in heroics, I do it on my hunter because it doesn't annoy me.

@ All the people defending the M&S fury warrior: I don't even think it's about threat, lack of GCD or anything. To me, any person who would answer "suck my cock" to an advice is a moron. There's no further to dig.

Anonymous said...

Sometime during that word salad, you probably should have realized the analogy was getting too forced to be any good at its core.

I would say the difference is that using sunder as a dps warrior is pretty niche, you have to be in a raid for it to be worth the effort then you have to lack a warrior tank, a very popular class, for it to be necessary. Hunter's mark is pretty core to every aspect of the game.

Like Artavur, I think he's mostly an idiot for dismissing valid advice, marking him as one of the willful ignorant. I don't mind reminding a hunter of distracting shot if they've clearly never been asked to use CC in groups before, but if they feed me a line about being a "non-trap hunter" like some tried to in TBC, they're getting kicked.

TBTSan said...

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=47467/sunder-armor

Sunder Armor causes a high amount of threat. Threat increased by attack power.

He might overagro easily.
Unless you have good tank use of Sunder is ticket to death.