How the Noobs Got on.

Last week I posted about noobs and how we all need to remember that we were noobs once too. I even said I was putting my money where my mouth is and leading a nooby noob raid through 1 qtr in Naxx, not a bad way to spend a Saturday evening.

I planned the group to include a few experienced players too, one per role ideally and this seemed to work well. The group composition looked like this:

1 nooby warrior tank and one experienced warrior tank
1 nooby rogue and 2 experienced DKs
1 nooby Boomkin, 1 experienced Warlock,
1 nooby disco priest, 1 experienced resto shammie and 1 uber geared tree who switched between dps and healing as needed (but we didn’t tell the tanks that, till now).

So all in all, there were more experienced players along, but what can you do, the purpose of the event was still there.

As it was an “introduction” to raiding, we stuck to doing just one quarter and choose Arachnid. I believe as a starting point for raiding you can’t go far wrong with Arachnid, I mean who doesn’t love squashing spiders?! With 3 bosses, trash between the bosses and some interesting mechanics, it’s a great learning ground.

Anub Rekhan in these days of ilevel 245 emblem gear, is pretty simple, no one bothers kiting him and as long as you have a sound Off-Tank to pick up the adds and can all run from Locust Swarm, you should be in a position to drop him. Which we did. 1st time. Hoorah.

Now on my first run (and every one since) on Grand Widow Faerlina we’ve beaten her up good and proper by dropping all the adds first. I had no idea until this weekend that this tactic was the “achievement” strategy. We did talk through the strat and even as the fight was taking place, pointed out when we would have dragged a mob over to sacrifice on Faerlina’s soft enrages. Again though, this fight was smooth and she went down with no issues. The cherry on top was the nooby raiders all getting [Momma Said Knock You Out].

The merry bunch made our way towards Maexxna with a little over 40 minutes gone. Not at all bad considering we were talking through all the strats, pointing out roles and making sure everyone knew about buffs, gish* and the like. The big spider dropped first time although we did loose one player to the webs. It's not a raid without one death though right? Oh. Well there is The Undying. Maybe we'll go for that this weekend.


*Gish = Fish, blameama.com

Help a Noob Day

I'm going back to the beginning this week. Well, if you believe the game begins at 80 that is. It's easy to become complacent when you've been 80 for a while, even if you're not at the cutting edge of end-game stuff, if you can run a HC in 15 minutes, your patience can on ocassion be a bit short with those who can't. Imagine bumping into a complete noob then. In your class and fannying around with a mix of gear including some very odd choices. How do you react? Are you tolerant? Do you offer some sage advice, do you say some derogatory comments about 'noobs' or do you just ignore it?



I was forced to ask this question myself this week when a newly dinged 80 whispered me at the Argent Tournament asking how he could get the aspirants seals. I was in a good mood, so I offered to help him. I talked him through how to get the seals and then what he would need to do next. He said he was after some gear for his DK and he knew about the T9 set. I asked if he'd been running heroics and he said he'd levelled entirely through questing. This knocked me back a bit. I'm not a huge dungeon runner myself, but I was shocked that he'd done none. Not. One. Nada. A closer inspection of his gear revealed this to be more apparent. I made a few recommendations of websites to read up on and suggested he ran some dungeons for experience before heading on my way. He thanked me and asked to add me to his friends list.

It took me all of 10 minutes to pass on some help and advice. Now I'm known for being a bit patronising so I do have to be careful when I dispense the 'advice', even so, most people I've encountered seem grateful as opposed to annoyed.

So I've decided to do this a little more often and try to remember those people who helped me out when I was just starting out. This saturday I'm hoping to take a bunch of guild noobs through Arachnid in Naxx, just to give them some experience and I'm wondering how the world of Azeroth would change if more people dropped the complacent attitude and helped a noob every once in a while.