The LFD Experiment

I've slowly been getting back into playing again. I'm not sure what keeps drawing me back in, but it always seems to happen after the summer is over and things get back to "normal". Some of my friends had starting picking back up, and I guess I just jumped back in.

For the past few weeks, I've put all my time into my Horde hunter, Ciladara. I've been playing this toon on and off since Burning Crusade was first relased, but never in a capacity where she was my main. I had always went back to the warlock for some reason, probably because she was the one with the most amount of achievement points.

It's been a lot of fun just concentrating on one toon, but I'm now to a point where I'm just running heroics with my friends and there isn't much else to do in my downtime that doesn't involve doing dailies. That's where my altaholism creeps back in.

Just doing another alt didn't found very fun. I've levelled so many characters to max level that just questing my way through just doesn't sound very interesting. However, I had a seed planted in my head by a friend of levelling a tank totally through LFD and not questing. This idea intrigued me greatly, as my general way of levelling involves a DPS and little to no dungeons. I decided to give it a shot and see if it was for me.

The Experiment

I quickly levelled a blood elf paladain named Jeaulia (yes, I know the racials are terrible) from 1 to 10 in Eversong Woods. It's amazing how quickly this has become. In the BC days, it would take roughly 3 hours and most of the quests in the zone to get to level 10. Nowadays (especially with 4 XP bonus heirlooms), it takes a little over an hour and only a few quests.

After level 10, I left Silvermoon and headed to Silverpine Forest for the remaining 5 levels. My goal was just getting to 15 so I could stop questing, plant myself is some city (near a vendor and a paladin trainer) and start the LFD magic. Silverpine is definitely a much better zone now and I'm kind of upset I didn't see it through. But, I really didn't want to get into that grind again.

After I hit 15, I set myself back up in Undercity and gathered up enough courage to queue for a random dungeon as a tank. Instantly, it popped up and I was in Ragefire Chasm. This was a dungeon I had never done before (which is going to be a recurring theme). I think I may have ran through it at 80 on my warlock just to get the achievement, but that's the extent of it.

Honestly, it was a non-event. With the small toolbox that you have at level 15, combined with a really good healer, we blew through the whole thing in about 20 minutes. I was very pleased that I was able to hold threat when appropriate, target switch, pull correctly, use all the abilities I had and not get lost.

I do have a bit of a confession -- this is my 3rd paladain. I have a 72 paladin on the same server (yes, I have a sickness) and an 80 alliance paladin as well. I have tanked a little bit before, but it was early on in Wrath and I honestly didn't like it a whole lot. It was well over 18 months ago, and honestly, I didn't remember a whole lot about how it was done. I've never tanked in the lower levels before, so this was a totally different experience.

By the time we were done Ragefire, I had dinged 17 (I was just into 15 when I zoned in). The group was solid, so we queued again and got Deadmines. I had done this instance once on the Alliance side during the BC or early Wrath days, but haven't been in here since it was changed. I honestly didn't remember it a lot, since we only did it the one time.

With my confidence high, I charged right in and assumed that I would figure it out as we went along. Since we had the same stellar group in the first instance w/ only one change, we blew through the place with minimal effort. No wipes and no real issues or drama. The only thing that was even slightly wrong was the next to last boss bugged and we had to start it over. He respanwed pretty quickly and we finished him off easily.

Two dungones down, a few achievements, another level and a half and a few new pieces of gear. LFD as a tank, where have you been all of my life?

The Mistake

Several people had to go, but we decided to re-queue and see what happens. My confidence was high, so what's the worst that could happen? We got Wailing Caverns, which I had run once during the early BC days and haven't been back since. I knew it was a maze, it was big and confusing, and I honestly didn't know the way.

This is where I made my first mistake. I pushed into the instance, got down to the main area and went left. So far, so good. We took down the first boss without too much trouble and then proceeded across the bridge. Pushing forward, we kept taking down the raptors, but I started to notice that people were trailing. I kept pushing, curious as to why people were trailing, and left it at that. Then someone left suddenly.

"Tank, for not knowing where you're going, you really don't listen." I was a bit confused by this and said that I was sorry and would follow. Then the druid left soon after. It was just weird, because I didn't know what was going on. I finally just said, lead me and no one was going anywhere... I gave it two minutes and then just dropped group.

When I got back to Undercity, I scrolled back through my chat log to see what happened. What I had missed was the mage who dropped first was sending in party chat to stop and drop down here, pleading, etc. and I never saw it. My problem is that I was looking at chat bubbles, and not the party chat because it was scrolling by with all the loot stuff. Because he was so far back, I didn't see the bubbles, and missed it.

I was a little bummed for a few minutes, but instead of not going back in, I decided to fix the problem -- move party chat to it's own tab in my UI and make the chat window bigger. I shouldn't miss anything now -- just make sure I have the party tab open when I'm tanking. Easy enough. I had to run so I figured I'd jump in later.

Redemption

Original Post: http://altsonparade.com/the-lfd-experiment