Nerdsworth Academy


A Wind Elemental Warrior

WoW: Fear the Elemental Nerdrage

Posted at
.
Updated at 
.

Hey all,

All of you World of Warcraft players may have noticed something amiss in the lands of Azeroth: the capital cities are under attack! *insert “We’re being attacked!” peasant voice here.*

The Earth elemental is rather straightforward. Watch out for her aoe knockback/knockup though.

Yes, the pre-Cataclysm event is in full swing and the elements are pissed. So pissed are they that they have sent their minions and lieutenants to destroy the entire world and liberate the Godfather of the Black Dragonflight, Deathwing… or something like that. Hell, I’ll admit it: I hardly ever read WoW quest text unless its specifically paladin related.

In any case there are new quests to complete and roleplaying to be had, but more importantly there are new bosses to kill. For each of the four elements there is an avatar that players can kill. The avatars are easy and have almost no trash; the air element has the most and even then it is only 3 packs of easy mobs. But the bosses still give 16 juicy justice points. This means that you can get huge amounts of justice points relatively quickly.

Which brings me to the nerdrage portion of this post. I was giving all of the elementals the other day to get a feel for them and in order to be able to write this quick-and-dirty review post. I ran the water & air elementals for the first invasion, then moved on to earth & fire. So I queue for the fire elemental, and drop him no problem. I give the queue another go and wind up in another group. The shaman healer is completely out of mana to start the encounter and asks others for water. No one has any.

So I wait for a minute or two for the shaman to get a bit of mana, then pull the trash. No issues. Then I pull the boss. I tank for about ten or fifteen seconds, notice that the shaman isn’t healing me, so I pop my divine protection at which point I die.

Wind blows! The air elemental spawns whirlwinds and also packs a nasty 2 second group stun. All in all, probably the coolest looking boss of the four elementals.

The shaman then proceeds to be about as immature as you can be on the internet (which is as immature as is possible for human beings). S/he says I should have put on my tanking gear, that I got 2-shotted by the boss, that I’m horrible, that I stood in the fire, etc. I’m not going to deny that I stood in the fire for a few seconds. I think it was the “Hot Feet” debuff that, that causes fire to be created at the player’s feet, but I can’t verify it. I was inattentive on a fight that I didn’t know, I wasn’t expecting there to be fire areas, I don’t deny that I screwed up. But I received quite literally 0 heals throughout the fight and died as I was moving of the fire. Luckily the DK picks up the boss and finishes the fight.

I win the roll on the Salamander Breastplate that drops. Shaman man says how he’s (or she’s) pissed and that I don’t deserve it. Then the dps leaves, so it’s just me and the shaman in the group. He queues up again, and I accept. He throws a fit that I joined with him, and I reply, “You invited me. /shrug” Needless to say, the shaman complains to his new party members that I’m horrible and that I rolled need on “everything” in the last dungeon. *rollseyes*

Water flows! Ghaz'rilla is back and with a vengeance. Well, not really. The water will freeze players, throw them around, and the like. Luckily the heads do not multiple when cut off.

I don’t understand what possesses someone to get in such a nerdraged state. The shaman came to the dungeon unprepared; I didn’t throw a huge fit. The shaman lost nothing from me dying (except perhaps a blow to his healing-ego), but felt the need to berate me throughout the entire fight nevertheless. I really don’t get people like this. At the end of the day, it’s a freaking game. Why get so worked up about something so small? It’s not like I wiped the raid ten times over. It was a couple seconds in a fire. Once. As if every player is supposed to react perfectly every single time. And it didn’t even end up in a wipe.

I’ve had my own bad days (like my previous 77-80 grind, I was grumpy for the last few hours beyond belief), but berating other players is harassment in my opinion.

It pisses me off that there’s no recourse for a player like this because there is a small chance that I would ever come across the same character again. I like having the short queues of shared instant dungeons, but I wish there were more options for doing something about immature/terribad/jerky players. If it were only on my server, I could ignore the player and let my guild mates not to group with him. I wouldn’t mind a player-reputation system, where you give players (or accounts) a rating after each dungeon, and set a threshold for your games of whatever stars out of 10 on average. Or whatever. I don’t know that I can even report the player for being a jerk. Because our characters are on different realms, the shaman couldn’t even give an apology a day or two later if they felt bad for being in a pissy mood.

It’s annoying because most of the time the dungeon finder has worked great for me. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of undergeared players, inattentive players, and the like, but I would say my experiences have been 95% positive.

The kicker is that 5% has been painful.

Till next time, try to avoid nerd raging! I know that none of my readership is into nerdrage. Get some sunshine, cuddle up on the couch, or just do something else for an hour or two. It’ll make the gaming time so much better.

-S


Comments

    Sunhawk said: 18 March 2013 at 18:05

    Hi Nerdrage,

    Thanks for the comment. I’ll take it into consideration… Please don’t troll.

    Thanks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *