LFD PUG Tool

I hit 80 on the weekend and after running random PUG Normals most every night for the last couple of weeks I had a decent set of pre-Heroic Blue Gear, while self-buffed I had close to 20K Health. On a decent Run I was pulling over 1500dps but occasionally would drop down to 1200-1300 if I was having Mana issues, or running all over the place and spending a lot of time in combat without actually hitting anything.

Being an 80 with reasonable Gear I decided to do some Heroics, and that's where the beauty of the LFD Tool comes in handy. No more do you need to send a tell to someone trying to get into their PUG Heroic, only to be rejected due to a too low Gear Score (or some other prejudice). Now you just sign up and Shazam! In you go. Oddly enough I found the Heroic queue to be shorter than a regular non-Heroic PUG, or maybe it just seems like it.

I ran several Heroics and noticed that my 20K Health (24K Group Buffed) was a bit on the low side, with some of my fellow party members having 40-50K. I've fought Instance Boss Mobs with less Health than that. It was not even uncommon to see Squishy Casters with 30K+ Health. I became curious. Just what was my Gear Score? I found a website that trawled the Armory and calculated my GS. It was in the mid 2000s. That actually didn't help me because I had no idea what was considered a decent Gear Score. I turned to Curse.com and the GS Add-On which came with a bunch of stuff that I didn't think was relevant. But if you don't want all this extra crap, it said, try GS Lite.

Hmm, I think I might, I said, downloading it and installing. It wasn't as invasive as my encounter with Dominos, in fact it was so non-invasive that initially I wasn't even sure it was working. Finally I noticed my GS was on my Character's Paper Doll screen, while if I moused over other characters their GS sometimes came up, and sometimes didn't. Perhaps those with no GS didn't have a GS Add-On.

I discovered that knowing the GS of others now gave me a sense of inferior inadequacy. Woah! That guy has a 5K+ GS. HOLY CRAP! That guy has 6K+! And here I am with my mid 2000s GS running a Heroic with them.

The good thing, as I mentioned, is I can actually run Heroics via the LFD Tool, and while I don't do the insane 4Kdps of the 5K+ GS player, I am doing close to 2K+ so I'm at least doing my bit, even if it's a small bit.

And by being able to get into Heroics I'm experiencing a whole lot more of the game than I did at 60 & 70 in the pre-Wrath days. Sure, I ventured into MC and Onyxia, then later Kara, but that was just dabbling. Being able to run Heroics now means I can actually gear up and loot Epic items rather than craft them (or buy them).

I figured the first thing on the agenda was acquiring a new weapon so I started looking through Atlas to see which Bosses in what Instances dropped Epic 2H weapons and discovered Loken in the Halls of Lightning dropped a Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. A wicked looking axe that someone clearly felt needed MORE AXES!!!

I signed up for a Heroic Halls of Lightning, ran the Instance but didn't see my Axe drop. I then ran several more Random Heroics before lucking out and getting into a random Halls of Lightning with a Warrior Tank and a DK DPS. They were the two that concerned me because either one of them could legitimately Need roll on the Cleaver if it dropped. But then I noticed they both had a 5K+ Gear Score, and when I inspected the DK he already had an Epic 2H Weapon. And here I was, tagging along with them, practically leeching off them as I tried to get Epics and upgrade my Gear.

My feeling of inadequacy was only increased when, while clearing Trash Mobs, General Bjarngrim ran in and suddenly I was dead. And so was the other DPS.

But the Warrior and the Death Knight survived, as did the Healer. And they continued to survive. This was a Heroic Boss with a couple of Adds and they were 3-manning him. At first I thought they'd only be able to survive for a little while but the Healer's HUGE Mana bar never even looked in danger of being depleted. The Adds dropped then the Warrior and Death Knight slowly but steadily chipped away at the General's 300,000 Health Bar. I've seen some cool stuff in WoW, and done some cool stuff of my own, but this was seriously impressive stuff. All I could do was look on from my place on the floor in amazement, and when they finally killed him and the loot dropped I didn't roll on it, not even a Greed roll. I felt like I hadn't contributed to the fight at all and so I didn't deserve to even get some vendor trash out of it.

After that the rest of the Run was practically anti-climactic, right up until we got to Loken. This stay we all survived. All of us except Loken of course, who went down so fast it was like he tripped over trying to get to us. I looked at what he'd dropped on his death. "Bother. No axe," I thought to myself, as I moused over the Epic item he'd dropped...and stared in disbelief.

The icon didn't really look like an axe but there it was. My Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. Mine! I hit Need and it became Mine, uncontested. I had my Axe. My Epic Axe. My Epic Axe with extra Axes was mine. ALL MINE!

And here's a picture :D


The Armor is rather dull looking, and I don't exactly look Paladin'ish, but the Axe is pretty damn cool, even if I do say so myself :D