pug stories

Pug tales volume 4

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So I haven’t actually messed with my baby priest (who was level 48 at the start of this set of dungeons) since BfA launched. But the backlog of pug stories will continue to pad my Blaugust post count while I’m busy enjoying all the new stuff!

As a side note to the dungeon running, I really enjoyed the world level scaling. Since I’ve been getting most of my XP in dungeons, I’ve been able to cherry pick my questing zones and focus on the ones I enjoy. So far that’s been Ghostlands, Silverpine, and Hillsbrad. I really like being able to completely finish a zone without the quests turning gray on me.

Maraudon: The Wicked Grotto: This dungeon was relatively fun, even though things went to hell. You know you’re off to an ominous start when the pally tank zones in and immediately says something along the lines of “you’d better try to keep up.” Things were mostly fine until we got to the first boss. We had tried to skip a bunch of trash but someone who was lagging behind the group pulled. We ended up with the boss and about 3 packs worth of trash. The warlock died but everybody else made it through. Amazingly the tank even complimented my healing. Which of course wouldn’t have been necessary if he’d have kept an eye on the group. In however many years I’ve been healing, trying to skip trash has led to dungeons taking longer way more often than not. Anyway this tank ended up bailing after the satyr boss, but the rest of us kept going to kill Celebras. It was honestly easier without the tank, since we took our time and everyone looked out for each other.

Razorfen Kraul: It feels weird that this one is stuck in the middle of the three Maraudon dungeons. I obviously haven’t run this one in a long time, because there are changes that I do not remember at all. Where did the pig boss go? Anyway I had a pally tank and a solid group. They were mostly quiet but the tank pulled at what was probably the perfect pace for me. We kept moving, but they didn’t pull tons of packs at once. This was a breeze to heal.

Maraudon: Foulspore Cavern: I had another reasonable pally tank for this one. Healing is always more fun when the tank’s pace matches what I’m comfortable with. This dungeon is so short that there isn’t much to say about it. The only rough patch was the area where there’s some ambient damage on the group. It was a little tricky to deal with since I didn’t have all the tools I would like for aoe healing.

I finished off at level 52. At this point almost all of the vanilla dungeons are open to me, and there is no way I’m going to get through them all before I hit 60. I’m not even halfway through them yet! Sadly this is all I finished before BfA, and it will probably be a while before I get back to this alt.

The good news is that this mini-project definitely helped me get comfortable enough with disc healing to try maining it for BfA. It has ridiculous survivability in questing and has been pretty fun in dungeons so far too.

Dungeons on Day 1

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I played a ton of WoW yesterday, exploring the new zones and slowly working my way toward the new level cap. When I got my first “go run this dungeon now” quest I was excited to see it. Sadly the character I’m leveling is in a solo guild, and the few friends I have that are actively playing wanted to wait until they finished their zone story before running the dungeon. I’d rather see this stuff with friends, so I waited.

When I eventually leveled up a bit more a new dungeon unlocked. THE MOTHERLODE!! There’s not really any story leading up to this one other than a quick conversation with Gallywix. I was a bit too eager so I decided to take my chances and pug it.

Other than on my “pug story” leveling priest, this is the first time I’ve healed a dungeon as disc in forever. Luckily the practice I got from pugging vanilla dungeons seemed to be enough for me to figure things out. In fact, healing this dungeon was a breeze. It was probably because the tank was 120 and had obviously already been chain running dungeons for a while by the time I healed them.

I don’t have any screen shots of this dungeon to post here because of course the tank chain pulled so fast I could barely keep up. The healing was easy because of their level and gear, but it was frustrating anyway. I had no clue where I was going. I didn’t have any time to look around at the instance or at the map. Nobody explained anything about the boss fights (at least they were pretty straightforward). I expect this kind of thing to happen eventually, but on literally day 1 of a new expansion I guess I was hoping for a different experience.

We all survived, and nobody was rude or anything, so I guess I should just count it as a win. Still, I want to be able to take some time, take some screen shots, and enjoy the newness of the expansion while it lasts.

Pug tales volume 3

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These are a little bit delayed since I had a few other things I wanted to post about. I have been running these vanilla dungeons pretty steadily so far. With the expansion upon us, I’ll have to set this project aside for a bit.

Gnomeregan: This group had a monk tank and a pally that pretended to be a tank. Even though the pally kept pulling everything went fine. Well, except for the fact that I forgot to turn in one step of the quest chain in there, so I didn’t get the quest to kill the last boss. This is possibly my most hated classic dungeon, but I felt like I hadn’t completed it without doing the quest so I went back a second time. I’m glad I did because the second group was super fun. People were chatty, emoting and dancing and having a good time. We even killed one of the extra bosses and people were happy to do it instead of complaining about wasting time. It was definitely the best group I’ve had so far, and I was actually sad when we were finished.

Scarlet Halls: Fast, quiet, no-nonsense group with a warrior tank. There were a few spots where the whole group was taking damage and I didn’t feel like I had enough tools to handle it well, but I did at least handle it. It is very strange to me how different the lengths of some of these vanilla dungeons are now. Blackfathom Deeps seems to go on for days, but the two Scarlet dungeons are over in just a few minutes.

Scarlet Monastery: Paladin tank this time. The group was very “gogogo” but given how short the dungeon is I didn’t really mind. The only time it caused trouble was when I stopped to turn in a quest and everyone ran on without me. Line of sight is still a thing, so one person died. If people pull without looking to see if they have a healer then I can’t be bothered to muster sympathy for them Pug tales volume 3

Pug Tales Volume 2

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Wailing Caverns: A relatively uneventful run. The dungeon is a bit long for as low level as it is, but at least it is less of a maze than the original version. I had a warrior tank who was just slightly squishy and liked to keep moving but it was never a problem. I’m starting to have fun looking at the meters and seeing that I’ve done more damage than the DPS.

Pug Tales Volume 2

Blackfathom Deeps: I forgot I had been queuing as both heals and dps. Somehow for this one it put me in as dps. I hadn’t set up my bars or talents yet. Whoops. I got that sorted, and it was a fun run with a decent group. The healer died at one point and I got to save the day. Other than that one slip up there weren’t any issues and we even cleared the extra boss. I wonder how many times I’ll actually get to go shadow…

Stormwind Stockade: Warrior tank who was a little timid on pulls but otherwise fine. They went to Hogger first and I was afraid they would leave without doing the fire elemental boss, but they did actually stay. The fire boss got pulled with a bunch of his trash but it was manageable. Between that quest and a couple more from when I was in queue I dinged 30.

So far in 6 dungeons I’ve only really had one bad experience, and even that wasn’t awful so much as weird. Did I get super lucky? Are WoW players getting soft? Or do I just need to get past the easy introductory dungeons before people start losing their sense of civility?