Late Night Puggin’

Mishalom, Pally of the Pugs, is trying to get to the WoW level cap using only the LFD tool in WoW! This idea is based off of the original Pugging Pally, Vidyala!

I popped in for a ‘quick’ run on Mishalom, after more than a month or so of not playing on him (and feeling guilty about that — on a side note, I’m now writing this months later. You’re lucky I have an awesome memory took good notes).

Being level 17, I anticipated either RFC or Deadmines.

And of course, I got Deadmines. (I was hoping for RFC, but I know better than to expect that now!)

The starting group was mostly levels 16 or 17, with a 19 druid dps, just to mix it up. The tank was a warrior, and I know there was also a rogue. The other dps I don’t recall, as eventually through the run they began to drop and enter like mad. Not that they were leaving because the run was going poorly.

/sarcasm

I might have been tempted to leave too, if not for remembering the golden rule I broke last time. I told myself I’d stick to it, even if it killed us.

Which it did.

>.>

Now, I’d like to call myself a good healer. I’m just fine healing with Misha, or so my guildies tell me, and I think I’m a good healer on my other non-shaman toons. But low-level paladin healing is a different ball game. There’s not much you can do — it’s literally just Holy Light*, the longest and most expensive paladin heal. Getting a second healing spell will really make my day (level 20 can’t come sooner!). So I’m not sure if it’s just the paladin healing mechanics at this level or if it’s me. I wonder if I would have similar healing challenges as a low-level shaman, since all they have is Healing Wave… but I don’t have one of those to experiment with. If you healed a dungeon as a resto shaman from 15 to 19, let me know how it went for you.

Anyway, besides that fact Mishalom drank vast quantities of melon juice to keep his mana up… it turned out the tank wasn’t very good either. His heart was in the right place (he too stayed through the whole instance), but there were many bad pulls with too many mobs, bad positioning, and lack of holding threat.

Here’s some math for ya: 1 barely at-level tank (for that instance) who isn’t good, plus 1 barely at-level healer (for that instance) who can only throw like 2 healing spells before going oom = death for all.

But even with that equation, the run, in the end, wasn’t that bad. In fact, I believe I dinged near the start of the run:

Names are redacted to protect the innocent. And it appears that other dps I didn't remember was a hunter!

I’m sure the mana from the ding didn’t last long.

After we beat the first boss in the shredder, the rogue repeatedly asked if we could reset the instance and run again, because their loot (some sort of weapon, I think) didn’t drop this time and could we pleeease please please go again please omg. We declined to requeue. (I forget if the rogue dropped because we refused his request or not).

We then proceeded to the goblin forge area, where we had our first wipes (partial and full). As I’ve mentioned before, that area always seems to give groups trouble, and our inexperienced tank managed to make quite a few bad pulls in a row that left me completely oom. I think the only reason why we didn’t completely wipe the second time was because the dps druid also healed and tanked (though not all at the same time!) But he was very flexible in his roles, which I really appreciated due to my almost constant lack of mana.

I think one of the dps was dead, while the rest tried to stop the wipe. I think the hunter in the distance might have pulled more (of course, I don't remember!)

Eventually we made it past that section and onto the rest of the instance, though we might of had some dps drop after the wipes. I even think one dps left as soon as they saw the low-level scum that was the tank and healer (it’s always exciting to see someone insta-drop your group, amirite? -_-)

We got close to ship where I learned a very important…

LFD PRO TIP

If you are in Deadmines on the docks directly next to the ship and the group begins to wipe due to extra mobs being pulled, hop onto the nearby water wheel! The mobs will not follow you onto the wheel and will loose interest, at which point you can hopefully rez the dead and try again.

Of course, I learned this tip (or rather, re-remembered it) by dying a horrible horrible death (along with a few other members of the group) and watching the druid and another dps remember about the wheel. Their knowledge of the wheel let us recover from the wipe without having to run back, which is good, because the overpull wasn’t completely the tanks fault. I still maintain that the positioning of the mobs on the ship does not bode well for lower level tanks.

Of course, the wheel can’t always save you — sometimes it’s too far away from where you’re fighting, or people die in unrezzable locations and have to run back, or only non-rezzers hopped up there and then the rest of the party has to run back. Splitting the party in Deadmines is never a good idea because there always seem to be patrols that have spawned behind you, and then the rest of your group can’t make it up to you because there are some pats in the way.

As for what the wheel looks like itself… well, I forgot to take a screenshot of it. But luckily, proper wipe-saving wheel maneuvers were demonstrated by Palintera and Linn through  Need More Rage:

Palintera and Linn, as mentioned in Need More Rage, have safely escaped the wrath of the pirates via clever jumping maneuvers onto the wheel of salvation.

If you’ll note the ramp in the distance, that is usually where pulls go bad, if not sooner near the walkway in the lower right hand side. If the mobs are clear on the deck and the corpses of your teammates are nearby, it’s an easy wipe recovery! Otherwise you’ll most likely have to die and run back.

But that was the last hiccup of the run. We cleared the rest of it with no other major problems, and I got my Deadmines achievement.

Whoo! Deadmines Completed! And you'll see that versitile druid tanking, and me running out of mana (as usual).

And better yet — somewhere on that pirate ship I dinged!

Oh look! There's the wheel down below!

The Stats

Here are the stats from this time around. Going up two levels in one run isn’t bad, even if it used all my rest xp. (Luckily it’s been months since I last signed on Mishalom, so he should be full again).

Level: 19 (+2)
Deaths: 5 (+3; Two from partial wipes, and one from a full wipe)
Drinks Consumed: 53 (+17)
Dungeons Run: 6 (+1) / 8 officially
–RFC: 4 (+0)
–Deadmines: 2 (+1)

*Technically I have Gift of the Naaru because I am a cheating Draenei, but if I was a normal paladin it would only be Holy Light. Besides, it has a long enough cooldown that it can be ignored, right? (Though it really can help out in a pinch).

Mishalom PUG Failure

Mishalom, Pally of the Pugs, is trying to get to the WoW level cap using only the LFD tool in WoW! This idea is based off of the original Pugging Pally, Vidyala!

It was over a month ago that I last played on Mishalom (and I’ll be posting this even later), so the PUGs aren’t the only thing I’m failing on. Fortunately, I left some handy cliff notes for myself, and I recorded my current stats, since I wouldn’t remember otherwise. My memory is like a sieve.

However, even without the cliff notes, I still feel a bit guilty for what happened. Let me explain. (I’d continue the quote, but this 1000+ word post is a little long to be called a summary).

It was an afternoon on a weekend; I had some time to kill before going out with The SA that evening, so what better way than queuing up from some random dungeons with the mini-pally? And since he was only 16 at the time, there would be plenty of time to go through several random dungeons. Because, you know, the only thing you get is RFC. And that takes forever. (SARCASM ALERT).

So the queue pops up for the random dungeon after a minute or two, and I accept, as a healer (per ze rules!) And that little window pops up saying who’s accepted… dps, dps, dps, me (healer)… but not the tank. And I immediately thought to myself, “Gee, that’s weird. Tanks always get insta-queues – why would they not accept the dungeon right away?” I couldn’t really imagine any situation where that would happen (I mean, maybe an emergency of some sort that happened exactly when they hit the queue button…), but I wasn’t left pondering too long, because at the very last second the tank accepted the dungeon.

“Oh well, we’re in the dungeon now,” I mused, carefully noting that the dungeon in question was indeed RFC. We all loaded in, and before I even got a chance to start deciding how to buff people, the tank charged in. I’m used to those types of tanks, but it was a little annoying (read: very annoying), because I like warning people that I need to drink a lot as an itsy-bitsy healing pally without heirloom gear (and only one healing spell). And when I say charging in, I mean he went and pulled 5-6 mobs. In RFC, that means you go pretty far down the hallway to get that many for your first pull. I’m trailing behind, mentally cursing chain-pulling tanks… when the tank intentionally leaves the group. That’s right, dude has 5-6 mobs and then drops group.

My thoughts were as follows:

“Oh crap, he just left while tanking a crap ton of mobs.”

“He left on purpose! That’s why he took so long to accept the dungeon – he was just planning to waste our time to screw us over.”

“What a punk! I’m soooooo P.O’d.”

“Oh double crap! I healed him before he dropped group and all those mobs are coming for me!”

That’s right; since I actually bothered to keep up with him and heal him against my better judgment, all the mobs came right for me. As any healer in this situation would do, I immediately backtracked. Some of the dps started to help take out the mobs, at which point I stopped running like a sissy and healed them like crazy. We probably would’ve taken care of the mobs as well, but a fast thinking fellow in group requeued us – heck, I don’t even know if someone actually had to manually requeue us or if it happened automatically. All I know is I got a little dialog box up which I clicked madly between heals, and then was deposited in Deadmines.

LFD PRO TIP

If your tank takes excessively long to enter the dungeon queue, and then pulls as many mobs as possible, don’t follow them and don’t heal them! They’ll either learn to not run ahead of the group, or they were planning to kill-by-absence and therefore it would be best if you didn’t have aggro.

(Aside: Who the heck has the time to go and screw over a low level group like that? You can’t run another LFD group for awhile. I mean, I guess they’re an alt, so they can just move to a different toon when they’re done annoying folks, but is that really worth it? You’re not around to see other people’s reactions, obviously. You just assume that they die and get really mad. But… we didn’t die. I suppose they may have achieved their goal, since it put me into a bad mood for the rest of the wow session, and I still remember the incident. But I feel better now that time has passed.)

And I haven’t even gotten to the part where I feel guilty!

Anyway, the remainder of the group was now in Deadmines, the new instance. I was a little worried, because I was 16, one of the lowest level characters there. And being the lowest level as a paladin healer in these earlier levels is never good. The group (3 from the original RFC group, actually — one of them left besides the tank, though I don’t remember exactly when) actually worked pretty well together. I had to drink often, but we got all the way to the pirate ship with little incident (I think we may of had some issues in the goblin forge room, but that’s usually a 50/50 75/25 90/10 chance as to whether something bad happens there or not).

However… once we got to the pirate ship, we ended up wiping completely. Twice. (My first deaths, I might add!) One time it was my fault too. You know how there are multiple levels to the pirate ship? And there are mobs on all the individual levels? Well, it turns out that when you’re of a certain level range (ie 15 – 17, or so), you are highly susceptible to accidentally pulling the upper-level mobs, merely by walking near their platform. Or underneath their platform. Or looking funny at the platform. Yes, it’s that bad, and I have experienced it before on other characters. With Mishalom, I wasn’t able to keep the distances that I needed to not pull those upper level mobs while still healing the group (it’s harder than it seems on the narrow ramp). And all those extra mobs on the top of the ship + the ones you’re fighting + low-level pally healer = death for all.

Add that to the ‘tank-leaving-the-group’ problem from before, and you have a frustrated healer. Worst of all, I had to bail. That’s what I feel the most guilty about – not seeing the whole dungeon through, like I planned that I would for all of Mishalom’s instances. It’s even in the rules, see?

Thou shalt never abandon thine comrades in a dungeon unless thou hath ‘a good reason’

(For those of you wondering, this is the rule I alluded to earlier when I mentioned I broke one of the rules).

I can justify it to myself, of course, because at that time of the last wipe The SA arrived to run some errands with me, so I had to go right away. I did inform the group of my intent to leave after the wipe… and I probably would’ve just get the upper level pulled again, if I had stayed.

More annoyingly, I know I would have finished the run with plenty of time if it had been the RFC we were in. But I guess that’s what happens when I assume that I’ll always get RFC at the lower levels. At least now I’m making sure I have plenty of time to finish whatever PuG the random dungeon finder brings me — I just need to remember that dungeons weren’t always designed to be run in under half an hour!

Either way, I did ding, so that’s always good.

The Stats In The End

Level: 17 (+1)
Deaths: 2 (+2) Daw, my first deaths.
Drinks Consumed: 36 (+10)
Dungeons Run: 5 (+1); I’m not counting the quick jaunt into RFC, as we didn’t go anywhere. Now, my character sheet on armory says ‘7’, but I think that counts whenever you portal into one, which means it includes the failed RFC run, and when I ran into Deadmines to retrieve my corpse. I’ll have to remember this differential…
–RFC: 4 (+0)
–Deadmines: 1 (+1)

RFC again? Who’da thunk?

Mishalom, Pally of the Pugs, is trying to get to the WoW level cap using only the LFD tool in WoW! This idea is based off of the original Pugging Pally, Vidyala!

My Pally of the Pugs had a few more runs a couple weeks ago. I jotted down some notes for this blog post that I will now expand upon (you see, my laziness keeps me from writing up PoP posts right after run when they’re fresh on my mind; instead, I write them weeks later, and them publish them weeks after that!)

The ‘random’ dungeon I got was, surprise surprise, RFC. The group consisted of a level 15 Druid tank, a Mage, a Hunter, a Rogue (a female dwarf one, from Argent Dawn, no less!), and of course, yours truly as a level 15 Paladin healer. I think the rogue might have been 15 or 16 as well, but it’s been so long I don’t remember.

The happy thing was that this group was amiable with each other enough to queue again. Or maybe it’s more the fact that no one had to leave at the end and the dps enjoyed an instant queue.

One thing that bothered me slightly (but apparently didn’t bother the tank), was that the mage always pulled first. Like 90% of the pulls were done by the mage. I would guess the other 10% were done by the hunter, who was encouraged by the mage to pull before the tank. Go go peer pressure. I guess they were impatient, especially because the tank was 15, and it’s pretty hard to tank stuff when you don’t have all of your key tanking skills yet. Like Swipe is a good thing to have when you have multiple mobs. So the poor druid tank was running this way and that trying to get more threat. I would have been very annoyed if I were tanking, but I guess the druid was fine with the situation. And, to the mage’s credit, they were very good at sheeping things. Most pulls were started with a sheep, in fact, and I bet it saved us on multiple occasions when we accidentally pulled more group than we should have. I was very impressed at their ‘mageing’ ability, but not at their ability to wait for the tank to charge in. Or rather, their lack of ability.

There were only really two other things that are of note during the runs we did. One was that the rogue commented that she kept thinking that I was an Orc (and one of the others agreed!) I denied that such a handsome Draenei as myself could ever be considered as an Orc! She said that everything looks different from her height, a sentiment I could agree on. Such small things, those Dwarves (I should know – I have quite a few of them!).

And second, Mishalom got to level 16 partway through the first run. Hooray!

Ding!

The Stats

Here are the stats after these runs. I accidentally forgot to record them after my next attempt; however, I did note the important things in the middle of the run, so it’s probably mostly correct.

Level: 16 (+1)
Deaths: 0 (+0)
Drinks Consumed: 26 (+6)
Dungeons Run: 4 (+2)
–RFC: 4 (+2)

Mishalom’s First Day

Mishalom, Pally of the Pugs, is trying to get to the WoW level cap using only the LFD tool in WoW! This idea is based off of the original Pugging Pally, Vidyala!

Mishalom, Pally of the Pugs, went out for his first LFD shortly after I took those wonderful screenshots in his debut post. In fact, I ended up doing two runs, since the dungeon that pops up when you’re 15 is really short.

And what dungeon is that?

I’ll give you a moment to formulate your answer.

…

Got it yet?

No?

I’ll give you a few more minutes.

…

*twiddles thumbs*

Alright, I think that’s enough time.

If you answered RFC… you are correct!

Ah, good ol’ RFC. Since I usually play Horde, I’m very familiar with it (“Hey SA, wanna run me through RFC on my 2398042 alts? Of course you do!”). Though now that the LFD system has been out for awhile, there are less lower level Alliance die-hards going “Abuh? What is this place? Where do I goooooo?” (Though it was fun playing guide when I did play on my little Alliance toons during that initial period).

Anyway, the dungeons runs:

RFC 1

With bated breath I hit the LFD queuer, set myself as healer, and after a moments fiddling, got it set to Random Dungeons. The queue was pretty short, as was expected. I only got partway across The Exodar before the box popped up, and I loaded into the familiar and not really random or unexpected RFC.

This run had a warrior tank, 19. I don’t really remember who the dps were, because we did not have time for conversation. In fact, we didn’t even have time for buffs.

As soon as we all appeared, our tanking friend was off, chain pulling three to four mobs at a time, if not more than that. I manage to throw a Might on them before I have to focus solely on healing.

‘Focus solely on healing?’ you ask. ‘Surely you jest, as Paladins only have Holy Light when they are 15. It should be easy!’ Except… except when it’s your very first instance that you’re healing as a Paladin, with a tank who only stops moving to finish up that last mob in the group before moving on, while your mana bar is quickly dipping towards empty but you dare not stop because the tank just keeps on moving and you don’t want to wipe the group by getting behind and you don’t even have time to type a request for mana!

I was actually surprised at how long I lasted at that pace. We were just approaching the orc section when I hastily typed ‘need mana after this fight’ while casting a heal. While I was still flustered at the pace of the pulls, I do give the tank credit for being courteous and waiting for me to drink. I wasn’t too sure if he would have been reading the chat!

But I think that was the only drink I mustered during the run (I am writing this several days in the future, so my memory is a little fuzzy), and the rest of the orc groups leading up to the boss were killed in a similar quick pull kind of way. I think at this point more people started getting aggro, so it made healing everyone a little more tricky.

After we killed the first boss, the warrior tank said a polite goodbye, and the group disbanded. All I could really say was that while it was a little stressful, it was pretty darn fast.

RFC 2

In between runs I took a page from Vidyala’s book and bought some Milk to drink. I discovered in the last run that the deliciously cheap Refreshing Spring Water that I happened to have lots of already was not really filling my mana fast enough last run. And I was down to 1 of the Milks I had picked up in my short-lived questing life.  So since I’m stingy with my in-game money (and out-of-game money, but that’s a different story), I only bought an additional 15 Milk.

… Which I ended up not using immediately, because the next group I got into had a Mage, who happily passed out water to everyone at the start. I sighed inwardly; since I knew I had to go to bed after that run (so said The SA), I wouldn’t get to keep using the free water through the night. So I drank them liberally during the run.

After dealing with the fast pulling tank, changing to one who went slower was… a little dull, actually. Luckily for me, the tank wasn’t the best, so there were a lot of:

• DPS pulling aggro and ‘tanking’ mobs
• Tank grabbing too many mobs on purpose
• Everyone accidentally pulling mobs (including me >.>;;)

This led to me running out of mana… a lot. Lots of different people needed healing; more than my Glyph of Holy Light could handle, since most of the dps were ranged. Even with Blessing of Wisdom on, I was having troubles; I started to judge Wisdom and hit mobs for mana, but either they would die too quickly or I would pull another group of mobs when I moved behind the tank (therefore I maintain it was their fault and not mine *cough cough*).

But while this run was slower, folks were actually talking. The mage suggested we that we queue again (though I said I couldn’t, because of The BF’s bedtime ultimatum; in the end, no one really stuck around), and another said that we should take on the boss in the back, which we did. Overall it was an amiable run.

The oddest thing, however, was the other male Draenei in the group, a shaman. I was running up to a mob to hit it and I noticed the shaman meleeing, which is common at level 15. But what was not common was the fact that the shaman was not wearing a shirt.

That’s right, his large, sexy (?) Draenei man-chest was displayed for the world to see. Or maybe just our groups.

At first I thought I might be imagining things, so I inspected him to make sure that, you know, he wasn’t wearing a chestpiece or a shirt that looked like Draenei skin. But he was indeed not wearing any chestpiece or shirt.

Here’s a conversation about it from party chat.

Mishalom: Dude, where’s your shirt?
Dude: I DON’T WEAR SHIRTS!
Mishalom: Oh.
Dude: I’m awesome like that.

It was pretty funny. I’m sure Mishalom didn’t mind the view, though. *WINK*

Current Statistics

Here are Mishalom’s stats from the end of these runs. Remember, stats are also stored up in the “Pally of the Pugs” page!

Level: 15 (+0)
Deaths: 0 (+0)
Drinks Consumed: 20 (+12)
Dungeons Run: 2 (+2)
–RFC: 2 (+2)