Sock puppet = Low Key?

I tanked HHoR with my newish DK 80. I win!

It's 100%. It does not slip in every now and then. If you have XP off, you will never ever queue a regular battleground.

The 70 rogue with warglaives is on an account without Wrath of the Lich King, so he can sit at level 70 forever and get his epeen off by ganking teh noobz.

All right, I've sort of hit a wall w/ this game. I got my prot war tank up about as far as he can go w/o doing more raiding. I have pretty much all the best equipment you can get outside of raiding, both for my tank spec and for my basically unused dps spec (I even got that sword you get w/ the battered hilt because I'm ridic lucky, quel'dar or something). I'm in some fail guild that runs the occasional fail raid.

Now, I don't really know any of the raids, and I'm extremely one-dimensional right now. I can tank and that's about it (this is to say that I can tank heroics). I imagine once I get my dps gear enchanted I'll be able to pull like 3k dps w/o too much trouble, but I really have no clue about anything beyond basic button rotations and specs and other types of info it's easy to get online. I have close to no knowledge of raids

What's the next step? How much am I expected to learn before I go looking for a real raiding guild? Am I really going to be expected to pug a bunch of raids first? Because I'm not sure I could deal w/ that. The ones I've done have been pretty insufferable by and large.

I'm out of touch with whats happening with the mini-raid coming up but right now you;'re sort of in no mans land where the currnt raiding for this epack is over so you should be preparing for the reset when the new xpack comes out

Well, as you said you don't know any raids and nothing about your class. Go work on that. elitistjerks has your class info and you can learn raids from a million websites.

And yes, if you are in **** gear you will have to pug before guilds accept you, ldo.

being under-geared right now is sort of weird problem though. most guilds who care are beyond done with ICC.

At this point most people are sort of twiddling their thumbs waiting for Cata. Your short-term, long-term goal here should be to learn your class forwards and back before the xpack comes out so when everyone gets dumped back to equal you're right there in the running with everyone come Teir 1 raiding next xpack

when he says he knows how to tank I imagine what he really means is that he knows how to stand in the way of something during a 3 man group quests. once you get passable gear I'd probably jump into every raid PUG you can get an invite too. learn on EJ what you're supposed to be doing and then get you trial-by-fire out of the way with people who dont matter.

cata won't be released until november at the earliest, they still haven't released ruby sanctum which is like a mini-equivalent of sunwell (final TBC raid which was released quite a while before wotlk). s8 is going to be long as f*ck as well, which gives me time to gear up my mage and get glad for the second time

Saying most guilds that care are done with ICC is silly.

Sure a lot of the guilds still working on normal mode ICC aren't great, but they would be an excellent place for him to start, get some ICC gear and go from there, and there are a TON of mediocre 8/12 - 11/12 ICC guilds out there.

Most good guilds are still working on hard modes, and with summer coming up there will be a lot of guilds needing to fill spots that are left void by raiders taking the summer off etc.

So just try to work your way up the totem pole, and see what you like, casual ICC Normal mode raiding might be all you want to do, or maybe you'll be hungry to move into hard modes etc.

First off though, Heroics to get yourself some gear.

I just saw the note that the beta opt-in is going to be starting soon.. go to your battle.net account maintenance and turn on your opt-in if you want to take a chance at a beta invite.

I dont know whats happening with the Ruby Sanc, so take that for wha tyou will.

For him it is. to go from and no gear into a ICC will be pretty tough, even this late in the game. If nothing else but the fact that tank are pretty important an you're going to have a hard time getting a group to give you on the job training unless you already know a bunch of people.

Run 42 random heroics a day until until you get everything you can get badge wise. rad on what tank should do and go watch some ToC videos online so you know the fights well enough that you can at least fake it. If you have zero friends who will help you learn what you're doing just go it to any PUG that you can con your way into. You'll get actual tanking experience and even if you **** it up in the worst way ever, who cares? its a pug and you have to learn some how.

IMO, your goal should be to get caught up for Cata, with the side goal of being able to get into Ruby Sanc if possible.

If you're not tied to server consider finding a practice guild.

learn your class and watch vids
Get gear good enough to sneak into pugs.
start building contacts
be prepared so that when Cata releases you're a viable raider

Yeah I'm pretty much done with raiding and arenaing for WotLK I think. I log on twice a day to play World of Auctioncraft and talk to a couple friends but that's about it.

Made sure my girlfriend and I both had our opt-in settings correct. This will be the first time there wasn't a Blizzcon code guaranteeing access. Hope one of us gets in 2-3 months from now or whenever the beta starts.

I agree on Wrath, it just started getting really stale. I'm on week 3 of my break and happy as a clam

=P

This has been debated in 4 life for a while.

I'm either Low Key, Ryan Beal, Diebitter, Mayo, Dids, Jmitch, Gizmomo, Gtpitch, Jmurder, etc., or some combination of the above.

Yes, but you can re-enable xp gain, faceroll a few bgs, then turn it back off when you get close to leveling, amirite?

Went to change beta preferences on my 3 bnet accounts, one of which I had purchased a sc2 beta key for (part of the pre-pay at gamestop for the whole game), I logged in my main account that doesn't have the beta and.. I see it is also enabled for the beta. WTF? I figured they would send out an email if you got accepted. Is that not the case?

Absolutely.

Just did the same and I'm accepted too. wtf... no email on my side either.

That is just the opt-in to get considered for the beta.. you still have to wait for your invite

i think they're saying the have SC2 beta on an alt account and never knew

Yeah, I already did the heroics thing. I tank those like it's my job. Have all the tanking 9/9.5 gear, and the dps 9/9.5, and the all the pvp you can get w/ triumphs (I'm never sure what anyone's standard of comparison is for gear or whatnot so I'm reluctant to ever claim I have "good" gear). But I seriously have everything you can get from 5-man heroics

Also, I never said that my understanding of tanking extended only to button rotations, that was regarding my dps spec. My understanding of tanking exceeds the level at which it is currently being tested, hence my hitting a wall. I watch videos for raids, but it only ever really helps if I have a raid to prepare for, and not just the generic notion of "getting better." Pugs are insufferable and seem like a really inefficient way to learn so I'd hoped the next step was something different. I mean I already went through this once w/ heroics.

When people say "prepare for cata," can you be any more specific on the types of preparations you're talking about?

Preparing for cataclysm = not playing now so that when Cataclysm hits you're excited to play again.

thats not what I mean at all. Right now you're in catch up mode. you dont have the gear, experience, or connections everyone else has.

Cata though is the reset button that puts everyone back at the same level. When I say prepare for Cata I mean being able to jump right in with everyone. You dont want to still be playing catch up whenever takes off ahead of you again.

If you already have all the badge gear, I'd hit the EJ.com threads, go watch the tankspot videos for some boss fights, and then just jump in to any Raid pug you can. Dont be afraid to screw up because everyone has to learn sometime, and its just a PUG. Get this learning out of the way now instead of in Cata. Try and make some connections too.

My advice would be either to seek a guild that's got the first 4 bosses down but hasn't gone much further, or to look for a guild run that's seeking a tank and let them know your gearscore, plus the fact that you haven't done the bosses, but have studied them.

As I've posted on here before, the first 4 are extraordinarily simple fights that you should be able to pick up in 1 attempt or less so long as you understand things like 'don't stand in the fire'.

If you're on Kil'Jaeden, I've got the guild for you!

I'd imagine that on most servers there are a bunch of guilds who raid casually that you can jump in, esp if you are badge'd up.

Plus, ICC is fun.

My guild is 7/12 in heroic ICC and we just spent an entire raid night wiping on Festergut with two 2% wipes. The fight is no different from normal mode except you have to dodge the malleable goos that putricide tosses at you from the balcony.

I did 13k dps one attempt and was averaging about 12k, while most of the other dps was around 9-10k simply because they were eating 1-2 goos every attempt. ugh, you'd think by now people would know not to stand in the green stuff/fire.

Doesn't the AVR addon make getting hit impossible on that fight?

Baddies will find a way.