Four dungeons were run, each full of trash packs, with more and more casters everywhere. Are line-of-sight pulls still a thing?

Quick Stats

  Since Last Update Total
Deaths 3 21
Dungeons Tanked 4 50
Levels Gained 4 58

Progress Made

Blackrock Depths: Detention Center was first up. On the first trash pull, Cordolvar died. Now, I could swear the healer was standing right next to me when I pushed the button to Intercept and start the fight, but I guess that doesn’t mean he was ready. In the excitement, I didn’t think to check Details! to see if he had healed me at all. It’s amazing what you can miss in the thick of combat. Otherwise, this run was smooth as silk—except that I think I forgot to take us to Houndmaster Grebmar, but no one complained. I feel pretty comfortable in this dungeon now, which is quite the shift from a few runs ago.

The next roll of the dice brought Cordolvar to Zul-Farrak, which I’ve never tanked. Plus my healer was in super-duper hurry mode, so he pulled everything. He was a real jerk. ZF is a difficult dungeon when you’re not used to it. There are lots of trash, and perhaps more importantly, lost of caster trash, which is stressful. Cordolvar doesn’t have anything in his spellbook to silence, so he has only line-of-sight to move the casters around, and maybe it’s just me, but line-of-sight pulls are something that even patient groups don’t seem to have the time for any more (and this healer was not patient at all). Caster mobs are difficult to maintain aggro on, because outside of melee range you need to have more threat in order to take aggro from someone else. So when a party member that’s outside of your range aggros a mob that’s on the opposite side of you, it can be really hard to get aggro away from them.

All that said, while the healer was in a big hurry and was a jerk with the pulls, he did an excellent job of healing. I don’t think my Last Stand weak aura triggered even once. So while I hate to say it, kudos to you Mr. Impatient Jerk Healer.

Cordolvar was then whisked away to the Upper City of Blackrock Depths where he joined a party in-progress, just after they had defeated The Seven. A smooth run, with the two remaining bosses cleared easily.

Last for the evening was Stratholme: Service Entrance. Another dungeon with lots of adds, and lots of caster adds. Lots of fear spells, which can draw more adds. Oh and a hunter that didn’t turn off his or her pet’s growl. So that was awesome. After a wipe on Magistrate Barthilas, I decided I’d had enough and asked the hunter to disable their pet’s growl. He replied that he didn’t know how (apparently they’ve moved the controls for it?1) With some help from another party member he eventually found the control and disabled it.

On trash, I generally don’t care if a hunter pet pulls aggro. It’s more work for me to keep track of, as I have to be sure it’s the pet, and not someone else that has aggro, but for trash, it’s usually not a big deal. Boss fights however, are another story; it’s just not worth the risk. For one, bosses are more likely to have cleaves or other frontal-cone attacks that require that the boss be faced away from the group. Hunter pets don’t allow for that kind of positioning. Secondly, there’s just too much going on in a boss fight to have stupid distractions like hunter pets, and aggro jumping back and forth. Plus hunter pets always die, because healers either don’t care about hunter pets and or they don’t have the healing throughput to keep them alive in the face of boss-level damage2.

Random Notes

Level 58! Outlands and Northrend dungeons are just around the corner!

  • 👍 I feel pretty comfortable in Blackrock Depths: Detention Center now.
  • 👎 I have a bad taste in my mouth from several bad huntersplayers in random dungeon runs.3
  • 👎 I don’t think Cordolvar got a single upgrade.
  • 👍 I cleared out all my Stratholme: Service Entrance quests that I picked up the last time Cordolvar was here, having joined a group in-progress.

UI Modifications

My Shield Block and Ignore Pain weak auras still aren’t working. I’ll need to strip them down bare and build them up slowly I guess. It’d be great if there were dummies I could actually hit to test on. I guess I’ll have to run out of Orgrimmar and find some local beasties to beat on.

I’m also thinking I should lower my details level. There are lots of distracting (but pretty!) spell effects that I don’t feel like improve my gameplay.

Also, the last few groups have wanted to put a raid indicator over my head. I need to find a way to turn that off, it’s too big and distracting. I want people to know where I am, that’s fine and great, but come on Blizzard, I don’t need to see the stupid orange disc over my own character all the time!

Footnotes

  1. A quick web search didn’t turn up any results, but I’ve at least two occasions where someone had to explain to someone else how to do it that makes me think it has recently changed. ↩

  2. This is a guess, based on my presumptions that a hunter’s pet doesn’t have as much stamina or mitigation as a proper player tank. If they did, hunters would tank everything. ↩

  3. Hate the player, not the class! ↩

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