25-man VoA forming up. I was on my paladin at the time, so I figure what the hey. Ret DPS isn’t exactly difficult (read: easy as crap) and I could use the Relentless gear, it would save me some honor farming. So I join in, do literally all of the summons myself (thanks guys), though thankfully I did at least have a dedicated clicker.
Gah, big advantage to 10 man raiding right there. Summoning is so easy when you have to deal with 8 people at absolute maximum.
Anyway, so in we go. Trash drops like nothing. We get to Koralon.
Our two tanks are Rhyokin (a well geared orc warrior with the title Gladiator) and Iliad (tauren DK, also well geared and also a Gladiator). Now, I respected both of these guys a great deal. They raid hard, they PvP hard, they seemed like pretty cool guys, overall. It’s also worth taking note of Nhiosis, a fantastic warlock with 85k lifetime kills.
If you bothered to armory them, you’ll notice they are all from the same guild.
First red flag goes up when the healers ask for healing assignments.
Rhyokin says: Iliad is MT, I’m OT
No, no, like who are we healers healing?
Rhyokin says: Iliad is MT, I’m OT
No… like, ok, I’m a disc priest, this guy’s a paladin, this other dude’s a resto shaman, and
Rhyokin says: Iliad is MT, I’m OT
No, ok, like who’s on the
Rhyokin says: Ok pulling!
And then he pulled.
And then he died during the very first Molten Fists.
And then he was all “WTF our healers suck.”
And behold, for the healers said “lol”.
Anyway, he demanded (and got) a battle rez.
But honestly, I have never seen such inept tanking of Koralon before.
Fire = bad. You can’t stand in fire. Alright, so, now the tank isn’t standing in fire. What about the melee DPS? Nope, they’re fine. Hey wait a minute, why aren’t any melee DPS hurting the boss?
I exaggerate a little. It was possible to DPS Koralon, it was just really, really hard, and there were lots of “attack from the side and pray it doesn’t count as the front” moments.
Relentless gear was handed out, and off we go to Emalon.
Rhyokin pulled.
Rhyokin died.
Iliad picked up everything.
Then the healers got there, and behold, for the healers said “wait what?”
First overcharge comes along. The add dies, but just barely in time.
Second overcharge. There isn’t nearly enough DPS on the add (only one death to nova of didn’t-you-guys-run-HoL-already) and it blows up, killing everyone.
Hamkins says: sry, i g2g, gl!
Nhiosis says: G2G!
Rhyokin says: G2g!
Iliad says: LATER SCRUBS! G2G!
Then they all left the raid.
Huh.
Ok, so. Yeah. There was a wipe on Emalon. More on that later.
But really, abandoning the raid right then and there? You drag a bunch of people together (Rhyokin was the raid leader) and effectively use them to give you the possibility of twinking you out with relentless gear?
I used to respect these people for being top-of-the-line PvPers.
What does it say about the old days when I just assume top PvPers aren’t complete cockmonkeys?
Anyway I put them all on ignore because really… I don’t have time to spend on cockmonkeys.
But god damn.
HOW do you wipe on Emalon?
Iliad says: That’s what happens when you don’t swap targets!
Words of wisdom, dearest cockmonkey.
So? You know what those incompetent farts that called themselves DPS says?
“Maybe we can tank the adds apart from the boss?”
“Yeah, it would make it easier to switch.”
Ok. Maybe I’m just an old fogey here, but I seem to remember there once was a time where, in order to call yourself DPS, you had to… I dunno, be vaguely competent at the job. Yeah, rose-tinted sunglasses.
But come ON. There are only five fucking targets in the room! You only need to attack one of them at a time! When you need to switch DPS, the add in question triples in size! There’s a huge fuckoff raid warning that says OVERCHARGE! IT EVEN HAS A SKULL OVER IT!
How… how do you even screw that up?!
“But I’m melee and my camera-”
Yeah bullshit. Bull shit. I’m calling you out here and now, you are an embarrassment to the label “DPS”. There is literally two mechanics on lengthy cooldowns you need to worry about. TWO. How the hell did you even get to 80 without being able to keep track of two things?
But I didn’t leave the raid. I typed off a snippy, sarcastic remark, ran back in, buffed up, and got ready for the next pull.
Cause I’m not a cockmonkey.
A douche, yeah, I’m a pompous douche. I admit that.
But…
God damn. IT HAS A SKULL OVER IT PEOPLE. DO NOT MAKE ME AGREE WITH THE COCKMONKEYS.
Then a ret paladin pulled the boss and bubble-hearthed, killing a bunch of people.
It wasn’t me, you goofs.
…
Stop looking at me like that.
IT WASN’T ME!
What, you’re too good to facepull and bubble-hearth, now?
Pompous Douche!
its actually much harder for ranged to switch targets when they are all bunched up together, becasue tab targeting refuses to work properly half the time (I guess Emalon’s big ass is blocking it from acknowledging the adds or something? ) so you have to manually click the target. its not impossible mind you, just not stupid easy like when they are tanked apart. in fact – its easier for melee to switch when they are all bunched up becasue – hey! its right there! you don’t have to run all the way across the room to get to it.
That said, what I’ve noticed lately is that most 25 man VoA pugs rarely get past Emalon. there are people (and I’ve been noting their names for future reference, but its just so many of them…) who come in for 3 reasons. extra triumph badges, chance at easy t9 and possibility of Relentless gear. the moment that boss is down, they either ninja log outright, or stay for obligatory Emalon wipe and then they log (I’m honestly starting to wonder if they are facilitating the wipe on purpose just to appear mildly impatient, rather then as the assholes that they are).
when you see someone from a raiding guild, pugging VoA on their mains, nowadays that’s a big huge red signal to me. why? becasue VoA is too good to pass up as a little filler on your raiding night for a bit of extra gear (read edge with those hardmodes), badges and just a relaxing interlude before you move on to the rest of the raiding content that is, and lest face it, just a bit sparse at the moment. more then likely, they are just in it for quick Koralon kill and then they WILL leave you stranded
.
I always pugged VoA on my mains and I’m in a raiding guild. Most other guilds on my server do the same.
Reason? Alliance here are a bit outnumbered, so there’s not much chance that VoA will be availaible when we’re raiding. And when we’re raiding, most other guilds are raiding as well, so nobody will really capture it.
And I will NOT leave after Koralon unless the fail is strong with that particular pug. Emalon is still useful for random offspec gear and stuff, I can help kill him, why not.
on my server, alliance outnumbers horde t least 3 to one (feels like more every time I have 9, I kid you not 9 tenacity during wintergrasp) needless to say, we don’t have VoA very often to ourselves so when we do, we more often then no change the raid agenda and go to VoA before anything else. that said, I think Bell has a good point. my guild’s 25 man raid nights are Tuesday and Wednesday and on Thursdays we have 10 mans, so by the time I get to try running anything on alts – its weekend.
I and people I prefer to hang out with always stay till the end of the instance myself, unless we’re wiping repeatedly becasue of the same thing over and over..or pug is already falling apart (like for example one or both your tanks leave and there’s no one with appropriate offspec. But unlike, it seems, a lot of people who for some reason managed to progress a little further then majority of the of the server, I still remember my scrub days as well as the fact that just becasue I don’t know most of the people I’m grouped with, doesn’t make them insignificant and worth treating like shit.
this is why new lfg system scares the crap out of me and I’m only going to use it long enough to get a pet. if people on your very own server can treat you like insignificant gnat, how are they going to treat people that they are almost guaranteed to never ever meet again?
I’m in a raiding guild and I pug VoA for the same reason Saithir does, we never hold VoA at raid times. Alliance is so badly outnumbered after Blizz enabled the faction transfer, there hasn’t been a WG lately where I didn’t have at least 5 stacks of Tenacity.
I wouldn’t leave the pug unless there was no improvement in 5 tries.
If you are turned to face the tempests a bit, you can tab tareget them. I’ve never had a problem with it (well, aside from over targeting, but Shift-Tab brings it back)…
or you can make a /target macro and set it to your adds tank, with /assist as the second line, so that you switch over to his targets and can go through there…so as long as he’s not doing something stupid like keeping Emalon targeted, you’ll be good.
The quality of VoA pugs takes a severe dive the further the week progresses. At this point, if I don’t get it done in the first few days I say “screw it” because it’s not worth the pain.
As well, I’ve met most of the top gladiators on my realm, and only half of them aren’t complete epeen stroking douches. The half that aren’t are really nice, but the half that are think they’re God’s gift to the game. They’re also likely to ninja loot, boot people for no reason to get their friends in, and just generally be annoying asshats.
But that’s just my server…
Roflmao. I did my first VoA 25 today on a melee toon..
I’m used to being on a mage very very far away from everything…It’s no different!
Although, our add tank, (A very good friend of mine) Kept pulling the adds over towards Emalon, to help out with the lazy melee dps..Which was pretty nice.. XD
But, In all honesty–If You’re really that god damn lazy to actually do your job as a dps and run over to the overcharged add..Then gtfo of VoA. XD
—Btw, Your blog is greeeat.
I’m glad that my guild runs VoA 25 as a quick start to the raiding week if we have control of WG. I have an alt, but I just can’t PUG anything. It’s too much for my low level of patience. My husband pugs all the time because he has a tank alt, but still, I hear his complaining while he does it.
I got a kick out of reading this one. Too funny.
VoA is the worst place ever to pug.
That fact had me thinking, why that place so much worse than everything else?
The only reason I can come up with, is the percentage of peeveepeers are higher.
Thereby, by infallible logic, pvp-players are horrible horrible people.
Well, just maybe that logic does not hold up outside the laboratory. ..
@leah
As ranged dps, Emalon is one of the few fights where I don’t tab target. I find it much easier to click above the heads of the adds, since the one that overcharges grows significantly higher.
And I’ve seen the same kind of stuff on northrend beasts. I was in a pug where they were telling people to mark the snobolds when they popped. That’s a sure sign of a fail PUG.
we always mark snobolds in my guild, especially on 25 man (especially on heroic) mostly because we end up with more then one up at the same time and you really want to get the healer’s snobold first, followed by the one on a caster and only when no other adds left – melee dps if they have any. it just helps with focus fire.
I laugh when groups take down Koralon and then wipe on Emalon, or even worse – wipe on Emalon trash. Yes, I said it – wipe on Emalon /trash/. Maybe it’s just me, but I it’s a bad idea for 10 people to take on trash from a 25 man.
Mind you, I’ve actually been in some decent VoA groups as of late. People actually getting out of fire, etc.
Although, I’m hesitant to take my tank there. It’s probably a lot easier to be mediocre DPS and make it through than being a mediocre tank. Or maybe I’m just a big baby…
Hint for VoA. Don’t go to it unless you know the person running it, and I recommend doing Emalon last. Keeps everyone there to the end, and you get more “worthless” badges.
Yeah, also, I haven’t met anyone with the Gladiator title who wasn’t a complete douchetard. I don’t know why, and I do not claim all are that way, Marcko seems like a damn cool dude, but on my server, the better you are at PvP, the worse you are in social skills and running a raid. Although a few of them are more than competent at doing their job, just don’t put them in charge, or you get the “don’t die, kill bad guys” leadership style.
I was part of a terrible voa run the other day as well. Spent about 30 min getting the raid together ( I wasn’t the leader, but was just helping to get things going). I also ended up summoning about half the people. Then we wiped on Koralon four times and everyone left.
On a side note, I’m thinking about changing my race from be mage to troll mage. Are the racials really worth it or is it just a waste of 25 dollars?
Troll attitude is the best racial in the game. Bar none. Do it now.
I have to say, I’m not sure I like the idea of VoA … the whole puggable-very-short-instance-with-amazing-gear thing encourages this sort of behavior … if the drop you want is on, say, That Mammoth Boss in Heroic Gundrak, you have to pull your weight through most of the instance first, and even if you don’t get your loot, you’re likely to finish it off.
It doesn’t help that you get PvP morons in VOA who can’t seem to understand that PvE has different mechanics.
Yeah, it could have been potentially a better weed-out process if they didn’t have the different wings or you needed to save yourself (via Archavon) before you get to Em or Kor.
“Might as well try again, suckas. You’re already saved!”
I was in two VoA pugs on an alt last night and we had the same problem, in Koralon I was constantly having to dance around to avoid the fire because the tank wanted to stay in the same place and just move out of the individual embers instead of just rotating him around the room so K’s ass was constantly covered in fire and the melee had to stand on his sides and pray we didn’t get shotted. Then we wiped on Emalon because I was one of 4 DPS who moved over to the add…. then 9 people left. So, we gave up on that run, formed a VoA 10 with the leftovers and 1-shot the whole instance with no problems. I will say, however, as melee DPS it takes me about the same amount of time or maybe slightly longer to switch to the overcharged add if we single tank it because the overcharged add kept being inside Emalon’s huge hitbox so I had to tab target and inevitably cycle through all of them instead of just run 20 yards. So, it’s no faster really, at least not for me, but it’s not really harder either.
I play a rogue, a warrior tank and a resto druid. And I do VoA on all of them each week.
There has been exactly one time when I was tanking him, when I was pulling the boss around the room – the very first run I did on the patch day.
There is completely no need to play tag with the boss.
1. Your offtank needs to follow you. By constantly moving you make it harder for no good reason (especially if it’s a pug tank, not your guildie who would be familiar with your tactics), and I’ve seen tanks that move him during Meteor Fists and then blame the healers for not healing them through 35k hits because they ran out of the sharing range of the ability.
2. By moving the boss around you basically screw the melee dps hard. Sure, it’s a pain if the whole back of the boss is covered in fire, but then a good tank will see that and take few steps backwards.
3. Especially on 25-man, the casters will be spread all around the room on the path where the boss would be kited. And no, casters don’t make a good offtanks for Meteor Fists (and yes, it works on range not on aggro).
Why are we hung up on How to: VoA? This post is win. You rock my face, pallyman. You’ve been on the reader, now you’re gonna get link’d.
Cockmonkeys! LOVE IT!
Hooray for Duckwood VOAs and PVP guilds. Generally the two don’t mix well : /
leah is absolutely right.
When you have only 1 tank it’s actually quite difficult to select which add is overcharged as ranged when Emalon’s gigantic ass is blocking the whole show between.
With 2 tanks it’s easy-peesy, Emalon is far away..
Anyone can switch between 5 targets, but it’s about how FAST you can switch to the right one.
BTW Mages are fragile and crazy individuals who we let get away with a lot of crap. Act like a pompous douche as a Pally? A RET Pally? Er…
The best PvPers on my server are cockmonkeys.. lucky for me they like me so if I’m being griefed, woohoo army of cockmonkeys, but yeah..
The tanks running like that shows what kind of people they run with normally. You indicate MT, OT and then you pull because the healers should know what to do and / or have sorted it out amongst themselves in a place like VoA (Pally Beacons OT then heals MT, Disc covers OT + shields MT, rest on raid likely for that setup). People needing handheld for an old fight is kindof dull.
Wiping on emalon then leaving is also fairly typical due to the fact that anyone geared enough (if your tank has 37k+ unbuffed, they don’t care about anything but Koralon and offspec gear, and won’t need the badges) for the fights is already basically only running for Koralon or offspec gear (which they won’t get to roll on likely). If a group cannot do Emalon then I can understand people who need nothing leaving, its a cost for no benefit for them.
Be that as it may, if twenty-odd other people helped you get your gear, you better help them get theirs. AT A MINIMUM. You can bitch and moan about how you did more DPS than they, or whatever excuse you like, but fact is, if you don’t want to help them, you shouldn’t ask for their help. That’s how PUGs work. Quid pro quo. Follow the rules or get out.
For my part, I will not leave an instance until the final boss drops or the group falls apart. Even that Heroic Oculus run with 12 wipes—just me, the priest, and Ley-Guardian I-Like-Vehicle-Fights-Too-Much left at the end. He wouldn’t leave. I wouldn’t leave. The big ugly dragon sure wasn’t leaving. We called in guildies and blasted that bastard out of the sky. It took two hours, start to finish, for a couple lame badges, but we did it.
I’m getting really tired of all the good blogs being horde blogs LOL!
lol you mad?
Really?
someones flustered that they got carried by pros, u mad bro?
my shoulders are so sore from all the carrying I needed to do.
This is about as off-topic as I could muster, but do you have any mage guides/tips in terms of fresh 80 stuff: running heroics, specs, PvP maybe… you know, all the fun stuff?