Don't Tread On Other's Fun

Instancing in WoW has always been a bit of a love hate relationship with me ever since I started running them back in BC. Sometimes its incredibly enjoyable, others you want to just log out for a month and see you feel after. For the past week or so while dealing with some personal issues IRL I have been working on my alliance guised hunter to keep my mind of things and over all its been a blast running instances I never did on Edy herself since I didn't have a need to bother with grouping until I hit Outland. Most of the groups I have gotten have been fairly efficient when we ran, not a lot of tanking over pulls or dps doing stupid things that killed us all, just calm easy runs with a few chats here and there. Even with the bad groups it wasn't anything that ruined the mood for me. If the group broke I just re-queued and hoped for better the next time. Today seemed to be the build up of all the bad groups I've missed so I could have back to back irritation as I made my rounds.

Now its not like any one thing is worth complaining about with most runs. Some were just groups that didn't have a shot to begin with but I will say that running heroic Halls of Reflection twice and not getting the first boss down on either go of it was not a good way to start out. The next run on Eddey (night elf hunter) was kinda like salt on the wound. Normally I can deal with bad groups and it was very obvious from the start this was a bad group as when I got in the healer promptly decided his was to go was better than the tank's so the tank and another party member who followed the priest died and the tank left soon after with the healer running ahead of him the whole time. That was, ok. That kind of thing is relatively normal these days though I am a firm believer in "follow the tank" as he is the one that gets beat on so that we may kill the baddies but what do I know? So the shammy and dps warrior who seemed to know each other talk it out and the warrior begins to tank as we wait for one in queue. Now I am not a tank nor do I profess to know how to tank other than the "oh shit" tanking I do as a hunter when things get bad or the aggro gets a little loose but I would assume if you are tanking multiple mobs as a warrior you would need to thunderstomp and the likes to get aggro so they don't go all over the place like marbles that have pointy things. I, as I have learned will be part of my job in the lower level dungeons, had to hunter-tank (not my favorite past time) nearly all but two of any given mob no matter what I did. Again this didn't bother me. What bothered me was in the middle of this chaos the damn shaman decided to inform me I was supposed to be survival and then went on to explain how he was right and I was wrong because he had an 80 hunter and that made him king genius.

[P] Shammy: You should be SV
[P] Eddey: I happen to like BM
[P] Shammy: but you get more dps as sv
[P] Shammy: i got a 80 hunter i would know
[P] Eddey: thats nice, I have an 80 hunter as well and have played all the trees. I find SV irritating and MM boring.
[P] Shammy: but sv is better
[P] Eddey: you play your way I play mine how about that?
[P] Shammy: geez guy no need to be mad

"No need to be mad," he said. Considering he was the lowest dps and I was at about 40+% of the damage done, was tanking, and doing what I was supposed to be doing in general I'd say I was pretty ripe to get mad. Don't get me wrong I have had plenty of people try and "tell" me how to do my hunter thing. Most I just let roll on by but this guy had to have picked the worst time to say something so stupid. I also might want to clarify that we were in Sunken Temple and in our damn 40s. There is very little difference in specs at those levels to be honest and God help me if I ran with tanking like that in a spec other than Beast Mastery.

I don't nor have I ever believed that somebody should be forced to play in a manner that they do not enjoy no matter how well or sub par something preforms. I have been blessed enough to run with people that are not obsessed with Elitest Jerks and crunching number, or just do whatever people say they should cause its the it thing. In general we play to have fun and perform where we should. When I switched to SV it was to help cause I didn't feel like feel like I was pulling my own weight at the time. I hated SV so I gave MM a shot and liked it better. When Cata hits I will most likely be raiding BM again depending on how I like it. Why? 'Cause I have a genuine love of the spec and how it works. Would I bitch at somebody in an instance because I think all hunters should be BM? Hell no. I even have guildies that raid BM right now and I am completely cool with that. Why? 'Cause its fun for them and when you play a game, damn it, that's what supposed to happen. We wouldn't have choices if we were supposed to do it one way.

As for the end of my run with that group, well things were pretty much ruined for me once that idiot started. We got a new tank but he was just as bad as the warrior and couldn't hold aggro. I snapped at him but apologized and left. It probably could have been a fun run too but I just couldn't get into it anymore. So next time you feel the need to give advice on spec and what not in a 5 man and you weren't asked to just stop, think about what you are about to say, then don't say it. Its a damn 5 man instance. Its not life or death. Its not 10 - 25 people running around in circles for hours. If its a random, these aren't people that logged on to the game to have you berate them for doing something in a manner that you wouldn't. Just shut up and play. Its more fun for us all that way.

Knowing What I Know Now

Ok though I would have loved to have only the exact song for my blog this is the closest thing I can get to what I wanted so if you would be go kind the song starts at 2:11 on the vid.

*cough*

That said the reason I've posted such a song is simple, I have a lowbie hunter and for some reason this song comes to mind whenever I play her. I look back at my leveling Edy back when I knew nothing of the ways of the hunter and think to myself how horrible and not so bright I was about what I should and shouldn't do. For example:

I know now that you shouldn't fight in melee
shooting and running is fine
I know now that a pet is over powered
at least 'til you're past the 70 line
Just think of it gee,
how great it would be
if I could go back some how
and have my hunter to level oooooover
knowing what I know now

Ok I got more but putting them in song just isn't something my brain can do right now so lets just list.

I know now that as bad as mana management sucks at level 12 it never gets any better
I know now that its a good idea to always keep your pet on passive in a dungeon, in particular ones where you don't know certain things (tank, the instance itself, other dps, etc.)
I know now that strength is not a hunter stat as we don't get ranged attack power
I know now that 80% of other hunters that have played longer than me still don't know these things
I know now that 90% of people you party with in WoW will assume you are that hunter in the 80%
I know now that feign death is the best hunter skill ever
I know now that some pets are smarter than others (I think I wrote a post about this in the past)

So what would you do different if you could do it over again?

A Tale of Two Anns

Once upon a time the sisters Edyion and Tytanya found a cow. Her name was Annodal and though she was merely a fresh, wet behind the horns druid, she took the call to arms the sisters presented her with and began to inch forward sowing her druidic slavation in the hopes of making their faith in her well founded.


Not long after the sisters met a fledgling warrior by the name of Annegwish. Anne is as mean as they come with a desire to beat the stuffing out of anything that can be hit. Small though she be she is a fierce as a wolf. If there is pain to be brough she will be the one to bring it. Needless to say Tytanya shows a fondness for this charge.

Ok ok that was fun but I will explain. Of late M.A.S. has been through a bit of a troubled time and though we have always needed tanks and heals we need them NOW more than ever. Annodal I had for a while but never really got into playing her cause she was just something to tinker around with, I am not fond of the size of taurens (specially taurens in bear suits)and I'd never played a druid. Now I have picked up leveling her to be a healer for M.A.S. and hopefully when she gets to 80 I can help releave a little of the stress on our 2 remaining healers. Annegwish is a much more recently rolled toon. Again I wanted to try a warrior and something about undead females and the way they fight is terribly amusing to me. I dont know why I rolled her at first but I think it would be fun to have her go the course and become a prot warrior. Again there is something terribly funny about undead females when they fight and its even MORE funny when they are getting the tar beat out of them tanking.

I probably wont talk much about them as I am having a pretty tough time keeping myself motivated to use them when I usually get called into active dps duty on Edy and Ty needs to be geared as is and really never get a chance to use her : /. Might be fun to keep you guys up on how the Anns are doing though.