Top 5 Noob Thing I've Done In Cataclysm (so far)

Although I like to run around in WoW and think that I am awesome, this is in fact quite far from the truth. So for a change, I am going to point out a couple of things that I didn't do very well. Because I enjoy playing alot of alts, there will always be a ton of things that I don't get right when I stumble my way through changes in new patches and even worse, new expansions. It is when I play these chars that I see myself as the enhancement shaman who stacks spirit or the meleeing hunter. Although I've never done anything quite as horrible as that (I did find a little hunter alt who had stacked spirit however!), I've still done a couple of things that made me go /facedesk when I found out. What did the people around me think? Fortunately they probably didn't think very much. In the average pug people don't inspect eachother until things go really bad, and none of these things are up there. It's interesting to see that not even I am perfect however! And when I talk about failing, I don't just mean forgetting to buff, fail on dps-rotations or accidentally make mistakes here and there. I do those all the time. This time I mean fail as in I really thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn't. I just hadn't got a clue. Worst thing is, I'm not even completely sure I've got these things right yet! Here is my list of top 5 noob stuff I've done in Cataclysm (so far).

5. Travel across the world for Dreamcloth
I am currently skilling my Tailor and thought I'd hit two birds with one stone by skilling on doing Dreamcloth which I can use on crafting epics for myself later on. Back in Wrath (and I think BC) you had to travel to a certain place in the world to be able to craft that special type of cloth, be it Mooncloth or Spellcloth or whatever it was called. So I just took for granted that that was the case with Dream of Hyjal and Dream of Deepholm as well. I happily travelled across the world to craft my Dreamcloths. But then the trainer told me I could now craft "Dream of Skywall". Skywall? I thought. Where the heck is that? How am I supposed to craft that cloth if I don't even know where that place is? Is it perhaps some code name for Uldum? That would make sense since you need Volatile Air to craft it and air is connected to Uldum. But Dream of Ragnaros? Dream of Destruction? It was getting really tricky to figure out where to craft those. So I started googling. And no one mentions the places anywhere! I couldn't be the first person who's had trouble figuring out where to go for these things, I thought. Unless... you didnt in fact have to go anywhere. I immediately bought the mats for one of the Dreams that weren't on cooldown and tried it, right there in Orgrimmar. And guess what? I had done all the travelling for nothing.

4. Random healing doesn't work so well
I mentioned I had tried out healing on my shaman a couple of weeks ago. By now I've got the hang of it, and things usually run fairly smooth in heroics. That wasn't really the case the first couple of times around. For some reason, I really don't know why when looking back at it, I had gotten the idea that Greater Healing Wave was the best heal for shamans. And I had completely forgotten to use Unleash Elements in my first heroic, so in a way to redeem myself (?) I thought it was one of my best skills and started using it each cooldown. This combination lead to me ooming really easily, and I just got the impression that resto shamans had issues with mana regen (couldn't be me doing something wrong, right?). Fortunately, before things really turned ugly, Jadiera wrote a great post on how to actually heal with your resto shaman and I realized I had been doing it completely wrong. After that, things worked well!

3. Cobra Shot? What is that?
One of the things that is easy to miss when there is a new expansion and you've got many alts to keep track off, are the new skills. I often just go about doing things the way I have always done them, and somewhere along the road I might realize that that doesn't work very well and change it, similarly to point number 4. You get Cobra shot at level 81 as hunter and when I got it I read it and thought "nah, probably don't need that". I played a whole level before I asked my friend, who mains a survival hunter (and I played survival as well) what his rotation looked like. When he explained it, and Cobra Shot turned out to be a vital part of it, I realized I had been doing it completely wrong for a couple of levels. On the other hand, things worked well before that as well.

2. Shadow Bolt > Incinerate
To ease up on my leveling, I decided to play Demonology on my warlock. I've never liked Affliction, but I do like Destruction, and Demo is pretty fun too. It was especially fun when I was attacked by an enemy warlock who feared me, and before I got out of fear my Felguard had killed that warlock. Op? Maybe just a little. But that's just an anecdote! Eventhough I did fairly well, which to a large extent was due to my pet doing most of the work, I really didn't have much of a clue about the Demonology dps rotation. It doesn't matter much when questing, but I do want to get it right in instances to make the run as smooth as possible. I had some vague memory of keeping up Immolate and spamming Incinerate back in Wrath (when I mostly played Destro) so I went with that. I wasn't sure which dots to keep up so I tried various combinations to find some good ones. But I didn't feel like my dps was very good so I asked a friend (who was also leveling a lock at that time) for some advice. I didn't actually ask him about rotation, because I was sure my Immo+ Incinerate spam was the right one. I asked him about which dots that where worthwhile casting. He quoted from some forum, probably EJ and the quote also included the general rotation. Which wasn't with Incinerate, but with Shadow Bolts! Incinerate was only to be used when proccing Molten Core. So /facedesk, I had been doing it all wrong for a couple of levels again.

1. There is no single target threat
I dinged my paladin 85 a couple of weeks ago, and have had the time to get her some nice gear. Fortunately Love enjoys healing heroics and I play her as prot, so I haven't had any trouble finding groups with her. I'm not that great at doing pulls yet however, and that problem wasn't made easier by the fact that I kept breaking cc all the time. It's not my fault, I yelled in party chat. I don't have any single target threat skills as paladin! I can't hold aggro with judgements alone! My Hammer of the Righteous, which was the skill I used mainly, hits all targets in the vicinity, so when I tried holding aggro around cc, it was unmistakingly broken. I complained about this problem alot. Why do paladins not have any single target threat skills? That's really stupid. I whined to Love, to friends, in guild chat. Ah well, I thought, protadins are great concerning all other issues, perhaps this has to be their weak spot. I'll just have to learn how to do better pulls! Then for some reason I got to thinking about a couple of months ago when I leveled a lowbie prot paladin just for fun. Before level 29 you won't have Hammer of the Righteous, but tank with Crusader Strike instead. Once I got HotR I noticed that it shared cooldown with CS and simply drew the conclusion that HotR was supposed to replace CR at that point. I had tanked alot on my paladin back in Wrath, and never used CR for tanking since it was a retridin talent back then. But as I started thinking about how I used it for tanking on my lowbie paladin the coin dropped. Why couldn't I use it now, at max level, for tanking as well? It generates Holy Power and procs Grand Crusader, just as HotR, it deals more damage (on one target) and it hits only one target. It should be ideal for single target threat. Actually it must be better than HotR when fighting one mob! It only took me 5 levels and 20 ish heroics before I figured that one out. That's the way it goes when something is too easy (damn paladins). Not until heroics did I feel the need to make sure that there wasn't a better way to handle things.

So when you go off flaming some noob in an instance for using the wrong skills/rotation/gear, just remember that noob could be me. Now share your noob stories so I don't have to be ashamed all by myself.