Dragons and Pilla's

PUGs

My evening last night began with me joining the Looking for Random Dungeon tool (LFD) and then being teleported off to Blackrock Depths. Unlike every other time when I’d been plopped in next to the instance portal, I was part of the way through the instance and half of the party was dead. A new feature in 3.3.3 which I adore: if you join an instance already in progress, you will be teleported to where your party members are, rather than the beginning of the instance. Lovely!

All but the healer, who happened to be from Argent Dawn also, left the group. I had no reason to leave, he seemed to be a nice guy, so we requeued with the Hunter who’d joined not long after me and seemed to be a sandwich short of a picnic but hey, win some, lose some. The new Paladin tank who joined, seemed okay, if just a little clueless. I asked if we could do the Ring of Law, a nice, quick, easy boss with something for everyone, depending on the boss that spawns, which really is half of the fun. The healer replied, “That’s fine by me.” The tank replied, “which way lol xD.” The hunter pinged the map a lot and said, “xD anywere.” Slash sigh.

Thankfully, the healer led the way. We went down one of the many corridors at the beginning of the instance (I don’t think I will ever know my way around BRD properly, I always, always get lost in there) where the tank had a blast running off, chain pulling each pack of Dwarves. When we reached the Ring of Law, we stopped and the healer tried to point out that there was “A quick boss here.” The tank carried on his merry little way, and died. Of course he blamed the healer, it couldn’t possibly be his fault for running off, right?

We eventually convinced him to head back and do the boss, and halfway through the fight he bubbled. I didn’t notice until me and Mr. Mageypants died from aggro and at the end of the fight, the tank said, “Oops, I bubbled, sorry!” Pfft. Better be. I left after that one. The healer was a nice guy but the tank and the hunter were a little bit moronic. That and I didn’t really fancy clearing every individual little room.

Quests

Afterwards I decided to quest for a little. I’d swept through Searing Gorge the night before on Fae, to get a bit of Loremaster done, and I’d never really noticed what a nice little quest hub it is. You pick up about 10 quests that you do in the same area, I especially liked the ones in the underground Cauldron, it doesn’t take too long to do them and nets you maybe a level or more of experience depending on your level, amount of heirlooms, and rested experience. Not to mention a Landin’ Pilla and a pile of Thorium Brotherhood rep.

I headed down to the bit where you pretty much have to kill a load of pink dinosaurs and this level 54 Orc Rogue was doing the same quest, so he invited me to a group. The first sign of a polite person! He smiled, he said hello, he asked how many more I needed, to which I told him, “8 more, you’re free to leave when you’re done,” and he said goodbye! This is very rare, I’m too used to my own server which seems to be very much ‘first come, first serve’ when it comes to killing mobs, maybe a ‘thx’, and I’d forgotten that people can sometimes be friendly.

After we’d finished, I had a nosey check of Recount to see what spec he was, noticed he was using Ambush, which made me curious. I spotted ‘Hemoarrage’ and couldn’t resist whispering him again, “How are you finding Subtlety by the way? :)” As it has been buffed in the patch and I’d been thinking about testing it out to compare it to my current build. We had a nice chat about the differences, he mostly told me that it was, “a little less damage, but more utility.” So, basically, great for PvP and questing, but Assassination still seems to be the most fun for levelling in my opinion, it’s still more damage, and more burst. I was considering staying Combat for a while because of all of the lovely energy regenning talents and Blade Flurry, but I’m a Mutilate convert it seems.

Boosts

Whilst I was finishing my quests, I received a whisper from somebody I didn’t recognise. Usually, this is a whisper from somebody asking for a SAN invite, but they were asking, “want a free BRD boost?” I did a quick /who and saw it was a guilded level 80 Warlock, nobody I knew. I don’t like to impose on people, even when they ask and I didn’t know this person, so I asked, “Are you going for the achievement?” They replied, “No, boosting my alt.” Fair enough, I guess that makes me the follow monkey. They put their alt on follow, and I just have to keep up and not get them killed or stuck behind things.

I inspected their Paladin alt after I’d died and run back in (picked up the quest to get the Shadowforge key though, not that I need it on my Rogue) and saw that they were wearing the cloth heirloom chest and shoulders, no neck or helm, grey level 2 bracers, some really crappy stuff. This was obviously a ‘recruit a friend’ boost. I asked if they were going for the zebra mount and they replied, “nope.” I guess they didn’t want to talk, so I figured I’d stay a little while and bail out after a bit. Following somebody quietly while they kill stuff isn’t really my idea of fun. Their plan seemed to be to clear most of the prison area, the first boss and reset. I’d rather quest, though after I’d dinged 53 she bailed out anyway. I gained about 50% of a level from joining them, can’t complain. Afterwards, I finished off in Searing Gorge, where, for the second night in a row, the damn dragon scared me half to death.

Note to Self

Argent Dawn is not like Vashj, there *is* such a thing as a nice person. I always said that if you expect stuff to suck, when it doesn’t you’ll have a pleasant surprise! Does that make me an optimistic pessimist?