Tonight I was putzing around on my druid, collecting herbs to mill into Darkmoon Faire cards, and trolling the LFG forums incase something came up that interests me. A group was looking for a healer for the heroic daily which happened to be Draktharon Keep. Since my druid is part resto and I could use some upgrades, I decided to give it a shot.

The group was aces.

The tank was a paladin with around 28.5k health, the rest of the party was made up of hunters. The group didn’t do ‘nasty’ DPS, nor did we fly through the instance, in fact the tank was leading on the DPS charts and we wiped on the first boss. But the point is, they were friendly, polite people and it made the experience completely enjoyable.

After wiping on Trollgore twice I switched over to Zejus the Priest to just get it done. I still haven’t been able to get use to druid healing; the whole “Ok I’m going to cast this and eventually it’s going to add up to a lot of healing” thing. When somebody needs their health bar filled I like to do it right away incase another surprising spike of damage happens again (like a corpse explode, for example).

But anyway, once I switched over to Zejus things were fine and even though the boss fights weren’t a breeze like usual, the group was courteous and appreciative, and the fights were challenging which is a change from the usual “outgear the place, blow it up, get your badges, and get out”.

The final boss dropped Moonkin pants which would have been decent for an off-spec sort of thing but all-in-all I didn’t miss out on any loot.

Oh and since I had a few beers I was carrying on in guild chat channel and jokingly asked if anybody could craft a Titansteel Guardian for me for 43g 03s and somebody actually whispered and said he’d do it. He said he wouldn’t accept any gold and was happy to help. I felt bad taking it and even offererd 500g but he canceled the trade and wouldn’t exchange until I stopped trying to give him gold.

I feel weird in situations like that because, why do I deserve it? It’s nice of him but the item is worth a good 900g. Maybe I’m doing something wrong when it comes to farming gold and 900 is just peanuts. Who knows? But anyway I’ll have to dig up his name and mention him here because it’s an extremely generous thing to do and I don’t want it to go un-noticed.

Well, it’s time for bed…I suppose

I am downright disgusted with the way that Blizzard decided to lay out the daily quests for the Sons of Hodir faction.

The Sons of Hodir are clan of frost giants located in north east Storm Peaks in a section called Dun Niffelem.  After some long quest chains, players are finally able to complete daily quests to increase rep with the faction. Reputation with SoH is important because they offer shoulder enchants similar to the ones offered by the Aldor/Scryer in BC.  As of my rep level (friendly), they offer three daily quests.

The problem is that the three quests, especially Blowing Hodir’s Horn, is beyond frustrating because of how over-camped the area is. For Blowing Hodir’s Horn, you have to slay five Niffelem Forefathers, and five of something else (dwarves).  The area is so heavily camped that the instant a Forefather spawns, you must zoom over to it at 280%, dive off of the mount in mid-air, and cast any instacast spell that you have to tag the mob.  For a priest, it means that before you even start fighting the giant, there’s SW: Death damage, fall damage from diving off of your mount, and any damage that you take from the infestation of frost dwarves in the area.

It also bothers me because I’m forced to play like an inconsiderate prick. Normally I’m very courteous to other players, regardless of faction, but if you don’t play cut-throat aggressive whilst on this quest you’ll be zooming around in circles for an hour.

I just don’t see why Blizzard wouldn’t throw 50 of these stupid Niffelem Forefathers spread out over a large area.  It’s not like Storm Peaks is congested; there is plenty of room. And it also wouldn’t reduce the challenge of the quest; just the amount of time spent doing NOTHING while hoving in the air waiting for frost giants to spawn.

End rant.