Wednesdays with Random - January 27, 2010

On Wednesday nights, I run a guild event called "Wednesdays with Random." It's a laid back event to give folks an opportunity to play with me and run instances en masse. Some weeks, I have a ton of interest, on others (such as this week), it's a little light. Typically, Phill and I lead the way, and others pop on and off as they can. It's a good chance for folks to run 5-mans (with the occasional 10-man run if there's a lot of interest) with all different configurations of guildies. I'm the most senior member online on most Wednesdays, as our Guild Master and the other "Baron" (think Asst. GM) take the night off for a real-life gaming group they have. There's lots of opportunities for folks to show what they've got to Phill (who's an "Avengerknight," which is the regular officer rank) and myself.

Now, those that play with me know that I often playfully refer to myself as a noob. Truth is, I'm actually kind of OK. Nothing special, mind you, but I'm good enough to not embarrass myself too much and I usually find myself near the top of the DPS charts when paired with people of similar gear level. Last night, however, reminded me why I self-depricate: When I call myself a noob, then screw up, at least I'm demonstrating truth in advertising. The notes from last night:

On Sunday, I bought dual-spec for my Shaman, and bought her some resto gear. That night, I healed a Zul'Farrak run and everything went wonderfully. Shaman healing is rather simplistic at this point: Lesser Healing Wave on single targets, Chain Heal for raid-wide damage, and Gift of the Naaru for those pesky Warlocks who love to Life Tap without telling you. So, fast forward to Wednesday, and I get to log on a bit early, so I queue up for a random as a healer.

First run: Maraudon Purple. Straight-forward, no-nonsense beatdown. No one dropped below 50%, so no one knows that they just survived my second instance EVER as the healer.

Next run: Inner Maraudon. Tank leaves group immediately. Great. We re-queue for a tank, but the Ret Paladin in our group decides we should clear trash while we wait. No problem. I keep him up until the first turn, and then somehow I can't target him! What the %$@#!?! "Thanks a lot healer," he says as he croaks. We wipe, and then a DPS leaves. Turns out that the noob healer forgot to click on his focus target (the pally) and was healing absolutely nothing. I apologized and promised to not fall asleep at the wheel again.

Thankfully, by the time we were back in the instance, we had a new DPS and a fresh tank. Everything goes wonderfully, and I picked up an upgrade for my off-hand from Landslide. The tank we got was a little swift for us mana users, but we worked it out.

As we're on Princess Theradras, Justin logs on (a little early, but no big) for the night's festivities. I log onto the mage, and we're off to queue for a Heroic. We draw Culling of Stratholme. I knew from the first pull that I wasn't going to be able to auto-pilot this one. Our Death Knight tank was having trouble holding aggro vs. my Blizzard spell (although he was making every effort to keep me from getting eaten), so I resolved to leave that spell in the book and single target assist everything. Here's where the problem rises: When you make a resolution to leave your AoE in the book, YOU HAVE TO LEAVE IT IN THE BOOK. You see, when you forget, bad things try to eat you, and the tank, who believes that you aren't AoE-ing, can't always save you from your noobness. I died twice to my own stupidity. Thankfully no one said anything, and we cleared the instance with no issues (although we didn't make the timer for a mount and extra badge, which made me a little sad, because Justin could've used the Bronze Drake).

As an aside, I find running instances with lesser geared folks a chance to hone my skills. I can't just mindlessly spam Blizzard on the trash or go all-out to see if I can hit uber-DPS on Mal'Ganis. If I do those things, I'll die, as the poor tank will be overwhelmed. This group (save me and maybe the healer) was perfect for the instance, with all the DPS averaging 1.5k or better (and on non-trash pulls not damaging below the tank, who was at around 1.1k). Of course, I didn't look over their gear (except Justin's, but he's in my guild, so I care a little more), so they could've been walking around in iLvl 219+ gear and pulling 1.5k, but I was the only one pushing the tank's threat generation. I've actually found some things to work on (namely, the AoE thing), and it's nice to be able to find improvement in a group that you could easily dismiss as one that you carried. If anything, I was carried despite my numbers, and for that, I'm grateful.

During the CoS run, Phill had logged on. No one else wanted to chain heroics, so we took our not-quite 80s (his Mage, and my Paladin) into randoms. I got to tank two Halls of Stone runs, and I did OK. I'm still not sold on whether I'm going to be a serviceable tank or not, or if I even want to do that on the raid level. I made some newbie mistakes, but no one died because of them. On the plus side, I'm getting to know HoS rather well, as I've tanked it three times now. Considering I've tanked less than ten instances total (!), that's quite a lot for one dungeon. Oh well, random doesn't mean different.

All in all, a good night, and some decent learning experiences. That's also the first night I've done all three roles - Tank, Healer, DPS - in one play session. On that, I think I passed. True, there were three different characters involved, but I didn't miss a beat switching back and forth. Can't ask for much better.