My girlfriend decided to make a warlock, as some of you might know. Well she has two now... and a priest. and more to come im sure. she'll make the max of 10 characters for the realm, all with the same face, just different hair and clothing, maybe skin color and earrings. what can i say? she's that kinda girl. it will be fun to come home and ask...
"so baby, which warlock are you playing today?"
"oh warlock #5. her name is Jazelle, because every 5th filippino girl you see will have a name ending in '...zelle'. so might as well, right?"
"why not rochelle, or janelle, or rockelle, or azraelle, or calelle, or razelle, or danielle, or gazelle?"
"first, a gazelle is an antelope like animal and is not one of my characters. second, im on Jazelle because she's got this cool hat we got the other night, and because she has 30 or more pets for me to rotate through."
"okay.... "
where was i headed?? oh right. complicated.
so... because warlocks can be so complicated im going to try to make it really simple and make a beginners guide to warlocking. everything a warlock needs to know. everything a new wow player will need to know. or something like that.
first off, lets start by saying this, that the warlock has a bagillion spells and abilities, all of which are useful sometimes, but never are always useful all the time. and just to help avoid some of the confusion, the game, or blizzard, has decided to limit some of the things we do. that's fine. keeps things simple right? well not entirely.
Combat Pets.
These pets (starting with the Imp) can be sommoned to help you battle against helpless, monsters in azeroth. more likely than not, they're just out there grazing or looking for food, or caring for the cub. that's innocent enough, but their presence means you're able to annihilate them. and with the help of your pet, you're better able to do so.
You will start off at level 2 or 4 with an imp. you learn this spell from the trainers. easy enough. summon him and he'll do several things. just having him there will increase your stamina by a little. not a whole lot, but enough. during battles, he will put a "fire shield" on you. i dont know what this really does. but its helpful. he will aslo throw fireballs at the enemy. all good right?
at level 10, you'll get a quest to summon your next demon. and about every 10 or so levels thereafter, you'll be able to summon another pet.
the important thing to know about pets is that you can only have one out at a time. and each pet has a different purpose. Imps help with fireballs and adding a little bit of health to your small health pool. and a few other things. your next pet is a big bubble thing that can take a lot of damage. so most people have this pet run in and "tank" the enemy while you stand behind and cast spells. makes it kinda easy.
so that's the intro on pets. simple enough?
Spells
Warlocks start off with two spells but quickly go on to become a billion spells real soon. Now add some action bars on your screen and now you have room for most of them.
There are several types of spells. So let me break them down for you.
Direct Damage:
A direct damage spell is a spell that, basically does direct damage. they usually have a casting time, however some can be cast immediately by chance. i'll talk more about the "chance" later. but the major thing to remember a direct damage spell usually has a cast time (you'll stand there for 2 seconds casting it) and when it goes off and hits your target, it will cause the damage immediately.
Damage over Time:
Damage over time spells are usually cast instantly so there is no casting time involved. when you do put the spell on the target, a timer will begin to tick. for example, you have "Corruption" as your first Damage over Time (DoT) spell which will do 40 damage over 12 seconds. each tick of damage will happen every three seconds. if you divide, that's four ticks over 12 seconds if each tick happens three seconds apart. since there are four ticks, and all ticks has to total 40 damage, each tick will do 10 damage. its math, and its scary. but bear with me.
so when you cast corruption on the enemy, 3 seconds later, your corruption spell will do 10 damage. at 6 seconds, it will do 10 more damage. at 9 seconds, it will do 10 more damage, and at 12 seconds, it will do 10 more damage to total 40 damage. you only need to cast corruption once ever 12 seconds. there will be spells and abilities that will make corruption go on forever as long as you're casting something else. you'll get this later.
anyway, that's the gist if your damage over time spell.
Curses:
The warlock class has another type of spell up its sleeve. these are called curses. Now curses do different things depending on what type of curse you use. You begin with one called Curse of Weakness. This one, if cast on an enemy, will cause him to weaken. they will still attack you, but will attack you for less damage. You will get another curse called Curse of Agony. This one deals damage much like Corruption. Another curse is Curse of Tongues, which causes warlocks and mages to take longer to cast their spells. This is useful if your enemy is using spells to attack you instead of running up to you with a sword. you'll find some enemies that like to cast spells in the future. There are several other curses you can cast on the enemy, and they will do certain things. so you'll have to decide which is best to use and why... because... you can only use one curse on any enemy at a time. Thats all.
Channelled Spells:
As the name describes, these spells go off while you're Channelling or concentrating, or casting, or whatevers. casting these spells will mean that you will be in a channelling state for the entirety of the spell. Examples of this is Drain Life, or Drain Soul. Drain Life is a spell that you channel. throughout the channelling, you will be sucking the enemy's health and adding it to yours.
Combination Spells:
Some spells are combinations of the above. One is Curse of Agony, while it's a curse, it also deals damage to the enemy.
Another combination spell is Immolate. This one is a mix of Shadowbolt+corruption. Here's what i mean.
Immolate is a casted, Direct Damage spell but also adds a Damage over Time spell to your mob.
There's another spell you will get in the future (maybe) that you cast and it sends an orb to the enemy. the orb will do Damage over Time by sucking the health out of the enemy and putting that health inside the orb. and after a certian amount of time, the orb will fly back to you and give you all of the health it collected.
So those are the different types of spells you will be using as a warlock. Dont forget that there are different spells for each "type" of spell out there. Shadowbolt will not be your only direct damage spell. Corruption will not be your own Damage over time Spell. And you already know you'll have several different types of curses.
Easiest way to separate this is as follows:
Direct Damage: Boom!
Damage over time: Tick tick tick tick tick....
Direct Damage with Dot at the end: Boom! tick tick tick tick...
Dot that ends with a Direct Damage: Tick tick tick tick tick BOOM!
Channelled: tick tick tick tick tick (and you cant do anything else while it ticks).
Easy right?
Spell Use:
It is best to stand as far away from an enemy as possible, but still close enough to cast your spell.
The best thing to use would be a Shadowbolt, since you can cast the spell while the enemy is oblivious to your presence.
Your second spell should either be Immolate or Corruption. After your Shadowbolt hits the enemy, they will run towards you. During the time it takes for them to get to you, you should be casting Immolate. When it does finally reach you, you can cast Corruption (ONCE). Now there's nothing left but to cast another shadowbolt while your immolate and corruption slowly eat away at the enemy.
Depending on the encounter and what kind of enemies you face, it might be better to just cast two shadowbolts if they die after two shadowbolts. or you might just use corruption only and skip out on immolate. its up to you, but if you find that your enemy dies immediately after you cast corruption, then you dont need to cast corruption at all. it will be a waste. again, it will take time for you to learn how to best use your abilities as a warlock.
Next post will be about talent trees. you get talent points to spend starting at level 10. each time you level after that, you'll get 1 talent point and you can spend it anywhere on your talent trees. more about it later!
Also after you get your second pet, your spell choices might be different. i'll talk about this with pet choices later on.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
So I discover that my girlfriend is a Blood Elf kinda girl
And she loves warlocks because they're evil, dark and mysterious and all.
Then she sees my warlock and yells, "OMG nice.... he looks just like Justin Timberlake!"
W. T. F.
And i told Manders my gf made her first wow character, and her first response was...
"let me guess, she made a belf... lock."
W. T. F.
you girls.... *shakes head*
Then she sees my warlock and yells, "OMG nice.... he looks just like Justin Timberlake!"
W. T. F.
And i told Manders my gf made her first wow character, and her first response was...
"let me guess, she made a belf... lock."
W. T. F.
you girls.... *shakes head*
Naxx pug and t9
So last night in naxx, we were doing a 20-man naxx (dedicated few acheivement) and i decided to buy the t9 shoulders and gloves to increase my stats. as you know, there is a 1 hour window where i am able to return the item. after the thrid wipe on KT, i decided to hearth to Dal and grab the two items since they were cheap and i had enough emblems for both of them.
45 minutes later, and three wipes later, we decided to call the raid, on KT. because people kept dying to iceblocks and void zones. i died to void zones once. me and a tauren were standing too close to KT, which made it difficult to see anything. now i know i can stand a little bit farther and still be in melee range. anyway, i had enough time to run back to dal and return those pieces. the dps increase wasnt really noticable. i guess i needed to enchant and gem and stuff. but two pieces might not show a gigantic increase in stats. perhaps i just sucked at single target dps. cos for aoe, i was kicking butt. i noticed a little higher damage from my combat text, especially when i 100% crit on exorcism. my numbers went up just a little, but not enough to make any difference.
in any case, i read that the attack priority with the 2pc t9 bonus is judge, crusader strike, hammer of wrath, divine storm.
and divine storm hits 4 mobs. which makes it somewhat useless in the KT fight because there's just... well.. KT. i still use it tho, since it does do quite a bit of damage. =/
the four piece bonus will get divine storm at a higher priority with judgements, and crusader strike will drop to #3. i guess i'll try my best to get the 4pc set tho, as it will give me better stats anyway. but i will only buy all of these items after i've picked up everything i can from heroics and the normal ICC5mans since i want to see how well my dps does with just stuff i get from heroics.
45 minutes later, and three wipes later, we decided to call the raid, on KT. because people kept dying to iceblocks and void zones. i died to void zones once. me and a tauren were standing too close to KT, which made it difficult to see anything. now i know i can stand a little bit farther and still be in melee range. anyway, i had enough time to run back to dal and return those pieces. the dps increase wasnt really noticable. i guess i needed to enchant and gem and stuff. but two pieces might not show a gigantic increase in stats. perhaps i just sucked at single target dps. cos for aoe, i was kicking butt. i noticed a little higher damage from my combat text, especially when i 100% crit on exorcism. my numbers went up just a little, but not enough to make any difference.
in any case, i read that the attack priority with the 2pc t9 bonus is judge, crusader strike, hammer of wrath, divine storm.
and divine storm hits 4 mobs. which makes it somewhat useless in the KT fight because there's just... well.. KT. i still use it tho, since it does do quite a bit of damage. =/
the four piece bonus will get divine storm at a higher priority with judgements, and crusader strike will drop to #3. i guess i'll try my best to get the 4pc set tho, as it will give me better stats anyway. but i will only buy all of these items after i've picked up everything i can from heroics and the normal ICC5mans since i want to see how well my dps does with just stuff i get from heroics.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Dual Realm Ability
I have been playing with my 80 alts more often. They are mainly on Ravenholdt (RH) but i do have two 80s now on Ysondre (YS) which i do enjoy playing.
Ysondre, US, Horde
On YS, i mainly enjoy playing my paladin because i have yet to have any decent gear, yet im able to do decently on dps. although i often do have problems with dps, as my hit isnt all that great, i am slowly building up my gear to more easily dps in raids. but currently, i have a mix of outland instance blues, some ilevel200 items from heroics, and a pair of pants, ilevel219, from forge of souls. I also got those same pants for my DK, who's also in YS with decent ilevel200 gear. he's kicking butt with about 2.5k dps. all in naxx-ready gear. i might see a boost to 3k dps as i get more gear from normal toc, fos, pos, and hor. i think my main goal will be to run those instances for now as i know the heroic versions are quite a challenge. i dont even feel like i do well in heroics yet, even though my gear and output matches the output of a person who's normally geared for heroics anyway. i really wish i can downgrade my triumph emblems to get some heroism gear, just for purity's sake, but i know that's illogical. mainly because, although i have no problems with dps right now, i know that if i want to do any kind of raiding in icc, i'll have to suck it up and buy some of those emblem gear that i an putting off. big numbers dont mean much to me if i cant make big numbers with my low level gear. and i mean low compared to the current wow population now (who's all decked out in triumph gear, minimum).
my philosophy is this, that is is better to be stagnant in gear, and still improve on my dps through rotations, watching procs, positioning my character, learning when and where i can use certain abilities, etc. once i am able to max out my output and effectiveness, then, and only then will i be willing to upgrade my gear. i think it is much better to improve the player before i improve the gear. think of it this way. if im doing subpar dps, getting gear will only artificially improve my dps. i dont actually get better, although my numbers may state otherwise. and i think this is the problem here. people think that when they get better gear, they will be able to perform better. but they're performing just the same. the numbers might be different, but the type of play remains unchanged. although this IS an improvement now matter how you look at it, it is not maximum potential.
i know people can argue that once you hit a cap on gear, you can also practice on the dummies and things to pull of better damage. but i find some issues with this. one, the only real place you can do this is at the target dummies.
(1) and target dummies can only help you perfect your rotations, but it will not help you improvise during a fight. but it doesnt help you with encounters. it does help you "know" your rotations and spells so that when things go bad in raids, your muscle memory will allow you to never skip a beat.
(2) if you run heroics a lot in 6k GS gear, you might pull off 5k dps overall. in this case, you wont really have time to actually develop a full blown rotation either. so heroics arent a great place to learn your skill anyway, being so high above its level.
(3) tank and spank bosses, depending on who it is (koralon, patchwerk, saurafang) all are good, but you also want to max effectiveness in other encounters as well. additionally, koralon has fires you must step out of, which is awesome. and saurafang has adds you need to deal with. all of these are a great learning tool but leave little room for error. and since people are risk adverse to begin with, i dont find people trying new things, new rotations, new potions, new trinkets, etc on these encounters as much as on target dummies.
With 1 and 3, there's very good opportunity to improve in your skills. but 2 does not offer much opportunity to actually know your character that well. cakewalks usually make people more clumsy about their class anyway. which is why i choose not to upgrade my character's gear because i know heroics (specifically taking twice as long to kill trash and bosses than having t9 gear) will help me develop my play much more than a once a week session with suarafang and banging away at non-responsive target dummies. dont get me wrong tho, they do help. but i find that being "appropriately" geared for heroics make the heroic runs that much more rewarding. an sure, when i do find myself maxing out on my character's dps, i then will look to gear as the only other alternative to improving dps. thats right. exhaust all other options before upgrading gear. i honestly dont intend to buy t9 gear or t10 gear until i've gone through and gotten everything from heroics.
So that's my deal on YS server. a dk and a paladin, both dps, trying to dish out as much dps as orcishly and elvishly possible before resorting to the most obvious form of advancement--gear.
Ravenholdt, US, Horde
Life with my new guild isnt too exciting. i think everyone's blaming this pre-expansion slump and summer vacation thing on low attendence. actually, i've seen lots of people in our guild. the only problem is that there's not a lot of people available for raids when raids are announced. last week two of the three 10mans needed to be cancelled because of low attendance. actually, the weekend raid, which i signed up for, included me and one other member. that was cancelled. i didnt know much about the weekday raids, but i think the "Main" group ended up stopping at Sindragosa. the "alt" group never made it off the ground and was cancelled.
But other than that, my guild seems pretty cool. there are a few players willing to do heroics with me, which is cool, but i really dont have much of a need for triumph emblems on any of my toons (except maybe for Diinky, who wouldnt mind more tier pieces, although the 4pc bonus is still iffy). thats in regards to t9 gear. but rejuv critting does add a little excitement. I did spend a lot more time on RH over the weekend, and it was just to be able to pug a few things with other guildies. hopefully i will get to know them more. hopefully. its one of those things i have to ease into, you know? friendships are built slowly and through adversity. its been only a week and there hasnt been any form of adversity thus far. i'll have to see if i really want to stay, although i do enjoy the people so far (although only 1 out of 10 people actually talk). i'll have to see what goes on on vent, as i do believe much of the conversation and chatter happens in private or in vent. so we'll have to see.
One of my friends decided to join a raiding guild as opposed to a "social" guild that raids. well actually i'll call my guild a casual guild that raids. we're not too social.
SO anyway, she joins and hates it. but i tell her to keep on keeping on as its only been one day. although she does feel a bit lonely, its expected as the new guildie. although it is a raiding guild, there are some pretty friendly people in the guild. so although she might think they're unfriendly or cold to her at first, its really because they've already developed in their friendships and spend a lot of their time communicating in private chat or in vent. plus, she joined on a monday, which is an offday for many people. i thinks he really does need to give it a chance to really evaluate if she really wants to stay. there's no point in joining and quitting in a day. and even if she's in another guild, it doesnt stop her from having alts in a different guild. she can log on to her raider during raids and log on to her alt/leveler/main when she's not raiding. but i know, sometimes we're attached to our characters. i dont know what she'll do. i hope she has fun. but sometimes in order to get what she wants, she needs to suck it up a little. i wish her the best. sometimes the rewards are worth the sacrifices. blah blah blah.
i think i'll want to level my priest and warrior now. i have two friends leveling mages. one has reached northrend and will probably hit 80 in a week. the other is a bit slower leveling and i think that's who i want to level with this time. she's hit 58 and is ready to do ramps and bf several times. so i'll go with her on one of my characters. probably my rogue, who's 62, until she reaches 64. once she reaches 64, we can level up with my warrior, as he is 65 and ready to tank.
i made the tank over a year ago when i made a deal with a friend of mine to level the characters together. this friend, instead, decided to level up to 80 without me. kind of annoyed me when she specifically said she'll level the character with me. anyway, when she started doing all the quests in zangarmarsh thereby leaving me to solo many of those quests on my own, i easily grew tired of it and played other characters. she was a healer/dps hybrid troll shaman and was able to easily get into instances as a healer. by the time she was about three levels above me, i just gave up and decided not to play the warrior anymore. after some other unrelated events, we stopped talking to each other. so there he sits. my warrior at 65 with no leveling buddy... until NOW!! yay. thanks buddy!! you rock!! just dont outlevel me like my old friend did. it will be a sad day when i have to stop playing the warrior again.
and so that's my ramblings for today. Yes, this is my lunch break and i think im entitled to ramble on as much as i want. lol. jk. anyway, i hope to NOT have to go to a third realm, but i may if my gf ever plays and chooses alliance. but she's got some project going on now and will probably be at it for another month before she tires of it. only time will tell.
Ysondre, US, Horde
On YS, i mainly enjoy playing my paladin because i have yet to have any decent gear, yet im able to do decently on dps. although i often do have problems with dps, as my hit isnt all that great, i am slowly building up my gear to more easily dps in raids. but currently, i have a mix of outland instance blues, some ilevel200 items from heroics, and a pair of pants, ilevel219, from forge of souls. I also got those same pants for my DK, who's also in YS with decent ilevel200 gear. he's kicking butt with about 2.5k dps. all in naxx-ready gear. i might see a boost to 3k dps as i get more gear from normal toc, fos, pos, and hor. i think my main goal will be to run those instances for now as i know the heroic versions are quite a challenge. i dont even feel like i do well in heroics yet, even though my gear and output matches the output of a person who's normally geared for heroics anyway. i really wish i can downgrade my triumph emblems to get some heroism gear, just for purity's sake, but i know that's illogical. mainly because, although i have no problems with dps right now, i know that if i want to do any kind of raiding in icc, i'll have to suck it up and buy some of those emblem gear that i an putting off. big numbers dont mean much to me if i cant make big numbers with my low level gear. and i mean low compared to the current wow population now (who's all decked out in triumph gear, minimum).
my philosophy is this, that is is better to be stagnant in gear, and still improve on my dps through rotations, watching procs, positioning my character, learning when and where i can use certain abilities, etc. once i am able to max out my output and effectiveness, then, and only then will i be willing to upgrade my gear. i think it is much better to improve the player before i improve the gear. think of it this way. if im doing subpar dps, getting gear will only artificially improve my dps. i dont actually get better, although my numbers may state otherwise. and i think this is the problem here. people think that when they get better gear, they will be able to perform better. but they're performing just the same. the numbers might be different, but the type of play remains unchanged. although this IS an improvement now matter how you look at it, it is not maximum potential.
i know people can argue that once you hit a cap on gear, you can also practice on the dummies and things to pull of better damage. but i find some issues with this. one, the only real place you can do this is at the target dummies.
(1) and target dummies can only help you perfect your rotations, but it will not help you improvise during a fight. but it doesnt help you with encounters. it does help you "know" your rotations and spells so that when things go bad in raids, your muscle memory will allow you to never skip a beat.
(2) if you run heroics a lot in 6k GS gear, you might pull off 5k dps overall. in this case, you wont really have time to actually develop a full blown rotation either. so heroics arent a great place to learn your skill anyway, being so high above its level.
(3) tank and spank bosses, depending on who it is (koralon, patchwerk, saurafang) all are good, but you also want to max effectiveness in other encounters as well. additionally, koralon has fires you must step out of, which is awesome. and saurafang has adds you need to deal with. all of these are a great learning tool but leave little room for error. and since people are risk adverse to begin with, i dont find people trying new things, new rotations, new potions, new trinkets, etc on these encounters as much as on target dummies.
With 1 and 3, there's very good opportunity to improve in your skills. but 2 does not offer much opportunity to actually know your character that well. cakewalks usually make people more clumsy about their class anyway. which is why i choose not to upgrade my character's gear because i know heroics (specifically taking twice as long to kill trash and bosses than having t9 gear) will help me develop my play much more than a once a week session with suarafang and banging away at non-responsive target dummies. dont get me wrong tho, they do help. but i find that being "appropriately" geared for heroics make the heroic runs that much more rewarding. an sure, when i do find myself maxing out on my character's dps, i then will look to gear as the only other alternative to improving dps. thats right. exhaust all other options before upgrading gear. i honestly dont intend to buy t9 gear or t10 gear until i've gone through and gotten everything from heroics.
So that's my deal on YS server. a dk and a paladin, both dps, trying to dish out as much dps as orcishly and elvishly possible before resorting to the most obvious form of advancement--gear.
Ravenholdt, US, Horde
Life with my new guild isnt too exciting. i think everyone's blaming this pre-expansion slump and summer vacation thing on low attendence. actually, i've seen lots of people in our guild. the only problem is that there's not a lot of people available for raids when raids are announced. last week two of the three 10mans needed to be cancelled because of low attendance. actually, the weekend raid, which i signed up for, included me and one other member. that was cancelled. i didnt know much about the weekday raids, but i think the "Main" group ended up stopping at Sindragosa. the "alt" group never made it off the ground and was cancelled.
But other than that, my guild seems pretty cool. there are a few players willing to do heroics with me, which is cool, but i really dont have much of a need for triumph emblems on any of my toons (except maybe for Diinky, who wouldnt mind more tier pieces, although the 4pc bonus is still iffy). thats in regards to t9 gear. but rejuv critting does add a little excitement. I did spend a lot more time on RH over the weekend, and it was just to be able to pug a few things with other guildies. hopefully i will get to know them more. hopefully. its one of those things i have to ease into, you know? friendships are built slowly and through adversity. its been only a week and there hasnt been any form of adversity thus far. i'll have to see if i really want to stay, although i do enjoy the people so far (although only 1 out of 10 people actually talk). i'll have to see what goes on on vent, as i do believe much of the conversation and chatter happens in private or in vent. so we'll have to see.
One of my friends decided to join a raiding guild as opposed to a "social" guild that raids. well actually i'll call my guild a casual guild that raids. we're not too social.
SO anyway, she joins and hates it. but i tell her to keep on keeping on as its only been one day. although she does feel a bit lonely, its expected as the new guildie. although it is a raiding guild, there are some pretty friendly people in the guild. so although she might think they're unfriendly or cold to her at first, its really because they've already developed in their friendships and spend a lot of their time communicating in private chat or in vent. plus, she joined on a monday, which is an offday for many people. i thinks he really does need to give it a chance to really evaluate if she really wants to stay. there's no point in joining and quitting in a day. and even if she's in another guild, it doesnt stop her from having alts in a different guild. she can log on to her raider during raids and log on to her alt/leveler/main when she's not raiding. but i know, sometimes we're attached to our characters. i dont know what she'll do. i hope she has fun. but sometimes in order to get what she wants, she needs to suck it up a little. i wish her the best. sometimes the rewards are worth the sacrifices. blah blah blah.
i think i'll want to level my priest and warrior now. i have two friends leveling mages. one has reached northrend and will probably hit 80 in a week. the other is a bit slower leveling and i think that's who i want to level with this time. she's hit 58 and is ready to do ramps and bf several times. so i'll go with her on one of my characters. probably my rogue, who's 62, until she reaches 64. once she reaches 64, we can level up with my warrior, as he is 65 and ready to tank.
i made the tank over a year ago when i made a deal with a friend of mine to level the characters together. this friend, instead, decided to level up to 80 without me. kind of annoyed me when she specifically said she'll level the character with me. anyway, when she started doing all the quests in zangarmarsh thereby leaving me to solo many of those quests on my own, i easily grew tired of it and played other characters. she was a healer/dps hybrid troll shaman and was able to easily get into instances as a healer. by the time she was about three levels above me, i just gave up and decided not to play the warrior anymore. after some other unrelated events, we stopped talking to each other. so there he sits. my warrior at 65 with no leveling buddy... until NOW!! yay. thanks buddy!! you rock!! just dont outlevel me like my old friend did. it will be a sad day when i have to stop playing the warrior again.
and so that's my ramblings for today. Yes, this is my lunch break and i think im entitled to ramble on as much as i want. lol. jk. anyway, i hope to NOT have to go to a third realm, but i may if my gf ever plays and chooses alliance. but she's got some project going on now and will probably be at it for another month before she tires of it. only time will tell.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Mondays
Mondays give me little time to reflect on things that happen over the weekend. But i'll try to blog out my thoughts and feelings for the past week on this post.
1. Gear score sucks. Why do people still consider it in any kind of conversation?
for example, "LFM, ICC10, need 2tanks, 2 heals, 1 RDPS, 5k GS pst"
no granted, 5k gs is something acheivable when poeple have been doing ICC10 for a while. and even even ICC25, everyone's gs should be over 5k. but for the guys gearing up in triumph gear, heroic gear, etc. these guys are rocking 4.5k GS max. i guess it eliminates the people who dont know the fights or at least, will be less of a contributor (all skill being equal, ofc). but still. people are looking for wipe insurance and the best thing they can think of is GS.
2. Forge of Souls is still awesome. I love the trash in Forge of souls. why? because they're spread out far enough so that its difficult to AoEyawn your way through the instance, but close enough that if you aggro one, you aggro the rest. thats just how it goes. and that's how i like it. also that phantom that does the shadowstep every 4 seconds, that guy is a blast. untankable and sometimes i just ignore him until the end.
3. There's this thing called CC. and its CC for a reason. if i cast repentance on a guy, please, for the love of kittens and daisies, please do not break the fucking CC. sure, break it when most of the mobs are down and you can deal with the CC'ed mob. but if you attack the mob that's harmlessly standing there in "repentance" mode, im sure he'll be pissed at you for interrupting his little time of self-reflection. sometimes i wish i can cast repentance on my own party members. Tanks, please dont charge the CC. hunters, please dont attack the CC. mages, please dont cast your blizzard with the CC in the radius.
4. Stop attacking when someone has Soul Mirror on them. geez.
4b. Stop attacking if you have Brand on you. geez.
5. Paladin tanks.... especially those running heroics.... GET SEAL OF COMMAND. kthxbai.
Thats it for my monday reflections. this weekend was rough. well this saturday was rough. thats pretty much all my comments. i would much rather have gone to ICC and play it for the first time with my guild, but something something about not having enough people and few signups, etc. made it impossible. so instead of pugging an ICC10 on saturday, i decided to run a bunch of heroics with guildies. sure, it was mainly one or two guildies. but heck, it was better than pugging a 10man icc. hopefully this week, or in the next few weeks, we can actually get some people together to do some farm runs of ICC. so at the very least, when someone asks if i can replace someone, i'd at least have the gear to perform at their level. and no, this is not a contradiction to me being anti-gs. its just that, for someone with no ICC experience, nor any ICC pieces on, i dont think i'd be an asset in a fight like, sindra or LK. thanks, but i dont want to be a weakpoint.
final note: please dont ask me to join a failpug. i know you guys wanna get your emblems, your kill and your loot. but if you guys are frustrated at the pug for messing up, adding me to the roster wont solve your problem. getting rid of the guy messing up all the time will. please consider the people you ask. i wouldnt ask my friends to join my raid if its failing unless i want to lose friends. now if my contribution would mean success, then sure, i'll go. but when healers quit because faildps cant get out of the lazers, then replacing the healer isnt going to help. sorry. had to clarify why i didnt want to do the RS fight.
1. Gear score sucks. Why do people still consider it in any kind of conversation?
for example, "LFM, ICC10, need 2tanks, 2 heals, 1 RDPS, 5k GS pst"
no granted, 5k gs is something acheivable when poeple have been doing ICC10 for a while. and even even ICC25, everyone's gs should be over 5k. but for the guys gearing up in triumph gear, heroic gear, etc. these guys are rocking 4.5k GS max. i guess it eliminates the people who dont know the fights or at least, will be less of a contributor (all skill being equal, ofc). but still. people are looking for wipe insurance and the best thing they can think of is GS.
2. Forge of Souls is still awesome. I love the trash in Forge of souls. why? because they're spread out far enough so that its difficult to AoEyawn your way through the instance, but close enough that if you aggro one, you aggro the rest. thats just how it goes. and that's how i like it. also that phantom that does the shadowstep every 4 seconds, that guy is a blast. untankable and sometimes i just ignore him until the end.
3. There's this thing called CC. and its CC for a reason. if i cast repentance on a guy, please, for the love of kittens and daisies, please do not break the fucking CC. sure, break it when most of the mobs are down and you can deal with the CC'ed mob. but if you attack the mob that's harmlessly standing there in "repentance" mode, im sure he'll be pissed at you for interrupting his little time of self-reflection. sometimes i wish i can cast repentance on my own party members. Tanks, please dont charge the CC. hunters, please dont attack the CC. mages, please dont cast your blizzard with the CC in the radius.
4. Stop attacking when someone has Soul Mirror on them. geez.
4b. Stop attacking if you have Brand on you. geez.
5. Paladin tanks.... especially those running heroics.... GET SEAL OF COMMAND. kthxbai.
Thats it for my monday reflections. this weekend was rough. well this saturday was rough. thats pretty much all my comments. i would much rather have gone to ICC and play it for the first time with my guild, but something something about not having enough people and few signups, etc. made it impossible. so instead of pugging an ICC10 on saturday, i decided to run a bunch of heroics with guildies. sure, it was mainly one or two guildies. but heck, it was better than pugging a 10man icc. hopefully this week, or in the next few weeks, we can actually get some people together to do some farm runs of ICC. so at the very least, when someone asks if i can replace someone, i'd at least have the gear to perform at their level. and no, this is not a contradiction to me being anti-gs. its just that, for someone with no ICC experience, nor any ICC pieces on, i dont think i'd be an asset in a fight like, sindra or LK. thanks, but i dont want to be a weakpoint.
final note: please dont ask me to join a failpug. i know you guys wanna get your emblems, your kill and your loot. but if you guys are frustrated at the pug for messing up, adding me to the roster wont solve your problem. getting rid of the guy messing up all the time will. please consider the people you ask. i wouldnt ask my friends to join my raid if its failing unless i want to lose friends. now if my contribution would mean success, then sure, i'll go. but when healers quit because faildps cant get out of the lazers, then replacing the healer isnt going to help. sorry. had to clarify why i didnt want to do the RS fight.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Stupid LFD Tool is Stupid
First off, i like the LFD tool. its great. it lets me queue up for instances without having to worry about putting together all the parts. and when its all over, i dont have to stick around and say how good everyone was and hope i do instances with them again. i like being able to get in there, do my thing, get my dose of dps goodness for the day, and leave. im not too much of a committal type of guy to begin with. so what i do have problems with is what keeps happening to me at level... 38, or 42, or 54, 68 and now 78-79.
I cant get into the instances i really want. at 38 i was too low to get into SMGY, so im stuck doing lower instances. then i do SMGY for infinity before i can actually do the other ones. when instances in my LFD tool shows up in yellow, i assume they are doable. but instead, im sent to an easier instance. always. at 42, it was the wait for SMCath. at 54, i was soooo sick of mara and sunken temple, i was waiting for... Strath/Scholo (that NEVER came because blizz figured only level 59 and 60 folks could join those.... but they forget that those people would rather skip all the way to Ramps in outland). yes blizz. the whole LFD system is a bit off. i complained about this in a previous blog, but im going to do this again because.... it sucks THAT much.
at level 68 i'd love to join Utgarde keep. not only will i "miss" and cause "glancing" hits a lot, i'll probably get killed if i pull enough aggro. that's not cool by blizz standards i guess. but guess what blizzard? i've been doing Utgarde keep with all of my toons BEFORE the LFD tool was implemented, and they did FINE (except for my tank, which needed the cobalt gear at 70, and i was rockin). Especially the DPS, they do fine! tanks? thats a different matter. healers? it might be stressful at 68. but really, people should be able to get into utgarde keep at 68. they always have before. why cant we queue up for it now?
And now we get to the point of my post. as Devynity has been leveling up, he's been realizing something. Whether he's 76, or 78, or 79, he'll always (I mean ALWAYS) get Halls of Stone or Gundrak. Last night he was 79, queueing with his friend who's a level 80. we did a random and got Halls of Stone. my god i wanted to cry. but i didnt and sucked it up. then asked the tank if we can requeue for something specific. we ended up getting Utgarde Pinicle. Woot!! the whole trip was awesome. For crying out loud, why couldnt we have gotten a more appropriate instance the first time? instead we got lolHoS.
Thats not the end of it. We requeue'd for a random and got.... GUNDRAK. omg. two level 78, two 79 and a level 80 queing and we got gundrak? W. T. F. thanks blizz. you really know what we like. whatevs.
So we manually picked the last four instances (the level 79-80 ones) and got Oculus. no wipes until Eregos. Wiped once on Eregos and got him the second time. it was rocky, but still pretty easy. The tank and i both dinged 80 in that instance.
So why blizz, why are you doing this to us? why are you subjecting us to this type of mockery? why are we only given subpar instances to do? i was doing gundrak two weeks ago. i dont want to do it again unless you're going to give me emblems on every boss. i dont even get rep. whats wrong with you? at level 79, i only want to do Pinicle, Oculus, Halls of Lightning and Culling of Strath. thats it. i dont want to deal with the other instances because they give me crap exp now. i dont want to deal with the lower instances because im trying to gear up to "skip" to heroics when i hit 80. i dont want to do the four instances i just mentioned at 80, on normal. i want to do heroics dammit. and i want to do ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR when i hit 80. and if i went through the whole LFD and took what you gave me in the ass, instead of demanding something that's actually challenging or fun, i'd still be stuck at 80, locked out of heroics and normal ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR, and forced to do lame normal level 79 instances just to meet YOUR gear requirement for the better stuffs.
So please blizz, i know that you want to keep the easy factor there, but if you've even monitored how my performance is in-game, you'll see that i almost always top dps charts. i've been through these instances over 500 times. i've done every single role there is to do (tank, heal, ranged dps, melee dps). i dont need easymode. i find it very insulting that a bunch of decent level 79's are stuck with... Gundrak(level76). seriously.
I cant get into the instances i really want. at 38 i was too low to get into SMGY, so im stuck doing lower instances. then i do SMGY for infinity before i can actually do the other ones. when instances in my LFD tool shows up in yellow, i assume they are doable. but instead, im sent to an easier instance. always. at 42, it was the wait for SMCath. at 54, i was soooo sick of mara and sunken temple, i was waiting for... Strath/Scholo (that NEVER came because blizz figured only level 59 and 60 folks could join those.... but they forget that those people would rather skip all the way to Ramps in outland). yes blizz. the whole LFD system is a bit off. i complained about this in a previous blog, but im going to do this again because.... it sucks THAT much.
at level 68 i'd love to join Utgarde keep. not only will i "miss" and cause "glancing" hits a lot, i'll probably get killed if i pull enough aggro. that's not cool by blizz standards i guess. but guess what blizzard? i've been doing Utgarde keep with all of my toons BEFORE the LFD tool was implemented, and they did FINE (except for my tank, which needed the cobalt gear at 70, and i was rockin). Especially the DPS, they do fine! tanks? thats a different matter. healers? it might be stressful at 68. but really, people should be able to get into utgarde keep at 68. they always have before. why cant we queue up for it now?
And now we get to the point of my post. as Devynity has been leveling up, he's been realizing something. Whether he's 76, or 78, or 79, he'll always (I mean ALWAYS) get Halls of Stone or Gundrak. Last night he was 79, queueing with his friend who's a level 80. we did a random and got Halls of Stone. my god i wanted to cry. but i didnt and sucked it up. then asked the tank if we can requeue for something specific. we ended up getting Utgarde Pinicle. Woot!! the whole trip was awesome. For crying out loud, why couldnt we have gotten a more appropriate instance the first time? instead we got lolHoS.
Thats not the end of it. We requeue'd for a random and got.... GUNDRAK. omg. two level 78, two 79 and a level 80 queing and we got gundrak? W. T. F. thanks blizz. you really know what we like. whatevs.
So we manually picked the last four instances (the level 79-80 ones) and got Oculus. no wipes until Eregos. Wiped once on Eregos and got him the second time. it was rocky, but still pretty easy. The tank and i both dinged 80 in that instance.
So why blizz, why are you doing this to us? why are you subjecting us to this type of mockery? why are we only given subpar instances to do? i was doing gundrak two weeks ago. i dont want to do it again unless you're going to give me emblems on every boss. i dont even get rep. whats wrong with you? at level 79, i only want to do Pinicle, Oculus, Halls of Lightning and Culling of Strath. thats it. i dont want to deal with the other instances because they give me crap exp now. i dont want to deal with the lower instances because im trying to gear up to "skip" to heroics when i hit 80. i dont want to do the four instances i just mentioned at 80, on normal. i want to do heroics dammit. and i want to do ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR when i hit 80. and if i went through the whole LFD and took what you gave me in the ass, instead of demanding something that's actually challenging or fun, i'd still be stuck at 80, locked out of heroics and normal ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR, and forced to do lame normal level 79 instances just to meet YOUR gear requirement for the better stuffs.
So please blizz, i know that you want to keep the easy factor there, but if you've even monitored how my performance is in-game, you'll see that i almost always top dps charts. i've been through these instances over 500 times. i've done every single role there is to do (tank, heal, ranged dps, melee dps). i dont need easymode. i find it very insulting that a bunch of decent level 79's are stuck with... Gundrak(level76). seriously.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
To Devynity.... and Beyond!!
This post will be about Devynity, my almost level 80 paladin.
As many of you know, he's leveling through this game as ret. from day one, he's been ret (yes, i leveled him to level 10 on the first day or so and gave his first retribution talent point) and will probably always be ret. One of the reasons he will stay ret is because i already have a paladin tank on another server. so making him a tank would mean going through the whole gear set grind. im happy with the gear i already have for Devynity, mail pants included. there is really no reason why he needs to do tank stuffs, unless he wants to get insta-queues and attempt to roll on dps plate vs. dks, paladins and warriors. but he doesnt. he wants to get priority when it comes to rolls for dps plate. he doesnt want to ask, "is it ok for me to need for offspec, please?" i mean if i even see a dk/war/paladin in the group when im taking, im going to automatically pass on the dps plate drops unless they dont "need" it. its just another concern i'll have out of the way. i dont really want to deal with it really.
The other reason why Devynity will not be going prot is because he's got no bag space left. none. nada. he's got an enchanting bad in the bank and filled bank full of frostweave bags. he's carrying around all frostweave bags and his backpack. he's got a bunch of enchanting mats that he still needs to use to skill up his enchanting (currently pretty low, in outland enchanting levels, but enough to DE nr blues but not purples). He's got inscription to about 85, but there's absolutely zero room for herbs, glyphs, parchments, inks, pigments, etc. zero room. All of his fish are sent to the alts to sell. There are a bunch of enchants he still needs to get rid of (that no one wants to buy!).
So because of the limited bagspace, the many professions he's already got to deal with and the constant annoyances of tanking heroics (see many previous posts about this), he's not tanking. ever.
Sorry Manda, i know you wanted me to tank stuff for you. i wish i could. but i wont. i love dps too much to change. i wish my gearset can be stored in a different bag. i wish i can put it in a closet instead. you know. all soulbound gear should be stored in a closet. that would rock.
SOOOOOOO..... moving on, devynity will be doing heroics when he reachs 80. he will get to do heroics instantly, i believe, as much of his gear is now pretty decent, with almost no green gear except maybe for a trinket, but thats it. most of his gear is level 175+ so hopefully he can get into the heroic randoms quickly. also, he's specifically choosing Culling of Stratholme, Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnicle and Oculus instead of using the dungeon finder tool. these four instances are more beneficial. god knows why a level 79 should be doing halls of stone or worse, gundrak, for their daily random. but i'll do them if i have to. i dont want to tho. i'd sooo rather do the other four level 80 instanes because really, those are the places where i will actually get gear that will count to getting me into random heroic runs. otherwise, im stuck at 80 doing regular HoL over and over or... buying my gear. desing flaw anyone? indeed. especially when people dont even do normal instances anymore at 80, unless its the later instances like forge of souls.
But seriously blizzard, why do you make us suffer through normal halls of lightning for the 8th time when we're already 80, have two pieces of triumph gear? only because we have a trinket that is level 135 and a cape that's level 156? we cant even queue for ToC because our gear isnt good enough yet? what is this shit? When my warlock guildie hit 80, she ended up having to go through two instances before she could actually join a heroic run. in those runs though, she did upgrade three different items. but the upgrade wasnt by a whole lot, and in the end, when we did enter normal ToC, her dps was about the same. (i get it tho, you want people who randomly q for groups to at least qualify via some gear scoring system, and so it will eliminate some of the fruststrations of pugging at 80. but still... i have 6 80s. come on now.) /rant
now back to devynity's progression. he'll continue to fish. he'll also continue to cook. what he'll stop doing is inscription altogether for the next month or two. i really just want him to get a good base of enchants and get a feel for the enchanting market on our server. also, i'd like him to continue to fish for gold and kirin tor rep. as well, he should be able to dish out some good damage in heroics. he'll be a character with just a few pieces of triumph gear, as i dont really care of he does 2k dps or 3k dps. actually, i'd like him to stay at around 2k dps (which means get all the ilevel200 gear from heroics bosses) which may mean i'll only use my triumph badges for my libram and only my libram.
why do i want my dps at 2k? because thats really all i need in heroics. sure, doing more might be stroking my epeen, but then again, anyone in iCC gear should be able to do more than 4k dps anyway. so what does that have to do with anything? do i really want to repeat Krakkenskull's and Akeelah's project on Devynity? i'll have to think about that. but i do realize that if i only do heroics for now, there's really no need to be buying better gear. those "free" drops from instance bosses are just fine. granted, i might have to run the instances many times, but im going to do that anyway. in the end, i really dont think it will matter except, unless i decide i may want to pug ICC. rep runs? sure! GKP runs?? i'll still have to amass some gold. pugs? this might be a good time to just join a pug for the hell of it. we'll see.
but that's it for my plans. thats all devynity will be doing. hopefully, if i like ret enough, my prot paladin will dual spec ret. i dont know why. i just think it will be fun. maybe. i dont know entirely where im headed with this. i just know that devynity is a blast to play, but his playstyle will get boring eventually. i dont want to go the pvp route though, since i know i have other characters im leveling up just for the sole purpose of pvp.
all in all, things are a little busy for me on RH, as im with a new guild. which gives me reason to be there. but eventually, if i dont find anyone to talk to in-guild, i might just quit the guild. i mean im there for some social interaction, but its been almost a week, and i am welcomed with silence most of the time, even when i say hello or when i ask how's everyone. i get zero response from the 15-20 people online. this does make me sad and i dont know what to tell my friend who invited me to join the guild. we'll see how that goes. but for now, and for the past two years, i havent been able to really find a home.
As many of you know, he's leveling through this game as ret. from day one, he's been ret (yes, i leveled him to level 10 on the first day or so and gave his first retribution talent point) and will probably always be ret. One of the reasons he will stay ret is because i already have a paladin tank on another server. so making him a tank would mean going through the whole gear set grind. im happy with the gear i already have for Devynity, mail pants included. there is really no reason why he needs to do tank stuffs, unless he wants to get insta-queues and attempt to roll on dps plate vs. dks, paladins and warriors. but he doesnt. he wants to get priority when it comes to rolls for dps plate. he doesnt want to ask, "is it ok for me to need for offspec, please?" i mean if i even see a dk/war/paladin in the group when im taking, im going to automatically pass on the dps plate drops unless they dont "need" it. its just another concern i'll have out of the way. i dont really want to deal with it really.
The other reason why Devynity will not be going prot is because he's got no bag space left. none. nada. he's got an enchanting bad in the bank and filled bank full of frostweave bags. he's carrying around all frostweave bags and his backpack. he's got a bunch of enchanting mats that he still needs to use to skill up his enchanting (currently pretty low, in outland enchanting levels, but enough to DE nr blues but not purples). He's got inscription to about 85, but there's absolutely zero room for herbs, glyphs, parchments, inks, pigments, etc. zero room. All of his fish are sent to the alts to sell. There are a bunch of enchants he still needs to get rid of (that no one wants to buy!).
So because of the limited bagspace, the many professions he's already got to deal with and the constant annoyances of tanking heroics (see many previous posts about this), he's not tanking. ever.
Sorry Manda, i know you wanted me to tank stuff for you. i wish i could. but i wont. i love dps too much to change. i wish my gearset can be stored in a different bag. i wish i can put it in a closet instead. you know. all soulbound gear should be stored in a closet. that would rock.
SOOOOOOO..... moving on, devynity will be doing heroics when he reachs 80. he will get to do heroics instantly, i believe, as much of his gear is now pretty decent, with almost no green gear except maybe for a trinket, but thats it. most of his gear is level 175+ so hopefully he can get into the heroic randoms quickly. also, he's specifically choosing Culling of Stratholme, Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnicle and Oculus instead of using the dungeon finder tool. these four instances are more beneficial. god knows why a level 79 should be doing halls of stone or worse, gundrak, for their daily random. but i'll do them if i have to. i dont want to tho. i'd sooo rather do the other four level 80 instanes because really, those are the places where i will actually get gear that will count to getting me into random heroic runs. otherwise, im stuck at 80 doing regular HoL over and over or... buying my gear. desing flaw anyone? indeed. especially when people dont even do normal instances anymore at 80, unless its the later instances like forge of souls.
But seriously blizzard, why do you make us suffer through normal halls of lightning for the 8th time when we're already 80, have two pieces of triumph gear? only because we have a trinket that is level 135 and a cape that's level 156? we cant even queue for ToC because our gear isnt good enough yet? what is this shit? When my warlock guildie hit 80, she ended up having to go through two instances before she could actually join a heroic run. in those runs though, she did upgrade three different items. but the upgrade wasnt by a whole lot, and in the end, when we did enter normal ToC, her dps was about the same. (i get it tho, you want people who randomly q for groups to at least qualify via some gear scoring system, and so it will eliminate some of the fruststrations of pugging at 80. but still... i have 6 80s. come on now.) /rant
now back to devynity's progression. he'll continue to fish. he'll also continue to cook. what he'll stop doing is inscription altogether for the next month or two. i really just want him to get a good base of enchants and get a feel for the enchanting market on our server. also, i'd like him to continue to fish for gold and kirin tor rep. as well, he should be able to dish out some good damage in heroics. he'll be a character with just a few pieces of triumph gear, as i dont really care of he does 2k dps or 3k dps. actually, i'd like him to stay at around 2k dps (which means get all the ilevel200 gear from heroics bosses) which may mean i'll only use my triumph badges for my libram and only my libram.
why do i want my dps at 2k? because thats really all i need in heroics. sure, doing more might be stroking my epeen, but then again, anyone in iCC gear should be able to do more than 4k dps anyway. so what does that have to do with anything? do i really want to repeat Krakkenskull's and Akeelah's project on Devynity? i'll have to think about that. but i do realize that if i only do heroics for now, there's really no need to be buying better gear. those "free" drops from instance bosses are just fine. granted, i might have to run the instances many times, but im going to do that anyway. in the end, i really dont think it will matter except, unless i decide i may want to pug ICC. rep runs? sure! GKP runs?? i'll still have to amass some gold. pugs? this might be a good time to just join a pug for the hell of it. we'll see.
but that's it for my plans. thats all devynity will be doing. hopefully, if i like ret enough, my prot paladin will dual spec ret. i dont know why. i just think it will be fun. maybe. i dont know entirely where im headed with this. i just know that devynity is a blast to play, but his playstyle will get boring eventually. i dont want to go the pvp route though, since i know i have other characters im leveling up just for the sole purpose of pvp.
all in all, things are a little busy for me on RH, as im with a new guild. which gives me reason to be there. but eventually, if i dont find anyone to talk to in-guild, i might just quit the guild. i mean im there for some social interaction, but its been almost a week, and i am welcomed with silence most of the time, even when i say hello or when i ask how's everyone. i get zero response from the 15-20 people online. this does make me sad and i dont know what to tell my friend who invited me to join the guild. we'll see how that goes. but for now, and for the past two years, i havent been able to really find a home.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Another for the Record
Poiny. Troll DK from Maiev.
Level 73 doing 450 dps in Azjol Nerub.
450 dps.
Keeps asking for buffs when he came late to the party (after the first pull) and i couldnt stop healing to simply give him fort.
Fort isnt going to help his 450dps. why he asked for it was beyond me. maybe just to feel good inside. i dont know.
Said we wouldnt wipe if i'd had just healed him instead of the tank. WHAT???
Then told us all we sucked.
We got a new dk, he did 900dps.
THANK GOD Poiny LEFT THE GROUP.
of course, i looked at his gear and spec.
blood dps. half the time he was in frost presence.
dual wield. wtf?
im not even gonna waste my time with the recount breakdown.
although the tank was having trouble with the fights, first time there, didnt know skirmishers had no aggro, etc. he did okay. the rest of the people took aggro tho, so i had more than just him to save. actually since he was last in dps, i decided NOT to heal him until i knew everyone else was safe. i mean, lose the lowest dps and you still win the fight. he thought he was super important.
anyway, thats all i gotta say about that!
Tanking and Gemming for the Asshats
This is a little related to the previous post, which is why i titled the post that way. but... it is not entirely. What i do like to talk about is the issue of tanks. No, not asshat tanks, but asshat healers or dps who look at a tank's health and decide that they have a crap tank. what i mean is this...
I zone into an instance and see four other players, one of which is the tank. now the very first thing i look at is who's the tank, and so i can set my focus on him. i rarely look at his HP if im dps, but i will glance at it if i was healing him. His health will give me a guage of exactly how much attention i have to give to him while healing the instance. that's basically it. i dont check his gear to see if he's crit immune, or check to see if he's even got the right types of gear on. i just take it by faith that the tank knows what he's doing, no matter the level of HP he may have.
Why do i say this is because i oftentimes find people commenting on the tank's health as the determining factor as to how well an instance will go, or if there are hiccups, who the first person to blame would be if we were to have to point fingers. of course, in a bad pull, the tank will usually die first, or if the tank has abilities on cooldown, the dps and healer may die before the tank has the opportunity to grab aggro. this happened to me the other night where adds aggroed and went straight for the AoE-ing dps and i couldnt do anything to stop them for maybe 4-5 seconds.
New tank
When people do see a tank with say, 25k health, a few things go through their minds, im sure. and one of these things is that the tank is "new". new to what? well, for a lot of people, they may assume the tank is "new" to tanking itself. a person new to tanking may be a liability for the group, as the dps and healer may feel like guinea pigs at this point. but the fact of the matter is everyone's learning, we just dont want them to learn while pugging with us, ESPECIALLY if they're tanks. correct? i mean we can deal with bad dps, or bad healing (even bad healing has its limits), but bad tanking is a no no. a new tanks, 25k health tanks all somehow equate to possibly bad tanks.
New 80
There are many who have been in the game for a while leveling their alt tank and barely reached 80. there are also others who have joined the game several months earlier and have finally made it to 80, ready to tank heroics. i've encountered many people who do 2k dps, heal wonderfully and tank like leetsauce who have just dinged 80 that day, the day before, or somethind during the same week. last week i had the experience of seeing one party member say, i just dinged 80 today, with three more people saying how they're new to 80 as well. i was the only one who couldnt say that. instead, i said i dinged 80 a year ago.
it was kind of refreshing to see fresh new 80s running heroics and not judging each other. what's funny, or sad, is that it's usually always the raiders who seem to compare and belittle everyone else. now i am not saying every raider does it. what i am saying is that when it does happen, its more likely than not, a raiding individual pugging his daily random heroic for his frosties.
So these tanks with 25k-ish health who just dinged 80 are often criticized for their low health, but my contention is why? that's usually what tanks had the day they started heroics when wrath came out. and that's a somewhat middle-ground. i started tanking at 23k health. and before ulduar hit, i had maybe 28k health at most. i struggled to even get close to 30k health. but now we see tanks with 40k health and think that everyone, upon reaching 80, should have those numbers. its almost infuriating to see people who really do not have any idea how overboard that number is. i mean think of it this way, if a new 80 tank were to tank normal utgarde keep or nexus, that's basically what a 40k health tank is like doing heroics.
The Fallacy of HP
I just came across a post this morning about effective health found here. Think Tank on Armor. He thinks about armor pretty much the same way i think about avoidance. it basically increases your effective health. now he has a pretty detailed example of how it relates to healing, and i cannot agree with him more about that. although in heroics, the amount of overpowered healing can bsically negate his claims, in raids, it is quite different. armor is king. avoidance is queen. and HP is the jester.... according to me.
Before we go on, i'd like to tell you my stand on HP. its subpar. it really is. anyone telling you to stack stamina as long as you have the minimum defense rating has no idea what he's talking about. it does make sense on its own tho. if you take everything else out of the equation, of course, the more stamina you have, the more damage you can take. but we live in a very multi-faceted world (of warcraft) and therefore, we have to take many other factors into consideration.
Note: the following examples will not include hard numbers but will describe the basic concept of the stats i will be talking about. if you want exact numbers please go to sites like elitist jerks or tankspot.
Mitigation: What Armor Does. the person who prioritizes armor when gearing will see a lot less damage per hit. overall, he might have more damage if he doesnt have enough avoidance. assuming that he's being healed sufficiently, his armor is negating a fair amount of the hits. the more armor he has, the less damage he takes per hit.
Example. Lets suppose a mob does an auto attack for 10k health. Lets suppose he only does auto attacks.
If the person taking the hits has zero armor on, each attack will damage him by 10k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 4th hit.
Lets say the person puts on armor (all other things being equal, including health, i know, not realistic, but this is to prove a point) so that he will negate 50% of the damage made to him.
If the person has armor to negate 50% damage, each attack will damage him by 5k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 8th hit.
Now consider that each hit from the mob takes 1 second. if he had zero armor, he would die in 4 seconds. if he had 50% damage mitigation from armor, he will die after 8 seconds. (i just made a quick example of TTL, or time to live).
Armor increases TTL, reduces damage taken per hit and makes life for the healers a whole lot easier.
See how armor works there? HP isnt really the "end all" of all tanking stats. by all means no. lets move on to the next item.
Avoidance: Total Avoidance is the sum of several stats, including Dodge, Parry, and Block. These stats are the basis of helping a tank NOT take damage. What i mean is a dodged attach will hit for zero damage. a parried attack will hit for zero damage. block is a different animal and has its own damage reduction amounts and things. but we know for sure one thing, dodge and parry negates 100% of any hit.
So lets take block out of the equation to make things simpler and pretend we're talking about DK tanks or bear tanks.
Lets take the tank from the Armor example and say he has 40k health, with 50% damage mitigation from armor. that is what we'll work with.
Lets say it's a DK with a dodge percentage of 24% and a parry percentage of 21%. This gives the DK a total of 45% avoidance.
This means that 45% of the mobs attack will not hit the dk at all. With some math here, we can estimate that per swing, the mob will get about 2750 damage. since each swing is 1 second apart, the tank will essentially take 2750 damage per second. with a tank of 40k health, it will take the mob 14.55 seconds to kill the tank.
Now 14.55 seconds is better than 8 seconds (armor only) and a whole lot better than 4 seconds (no mitigation).
Note/Edit: Please note that avoidance is on "chance per swing" and not an actual percentage of damage reduction. because of this, if you get unlucky and get hit on all swings, your TTL will actually be 8 seconds. If you're lucky and are missed on all swings, your TTL will be indefinite, or forever. Because of this reasoning, a more statistical analysis will have to be done, as in, if each hit from a boss has a 45% chance to miss (55% chance to land), what's the probability that the tank will survive for 15 seconds? i believe this will result in some z-score and bell curve with deviations and such. but if all swings were to be distributed evenly, i would give the tank about 15 seconds to live. again, more complex (and more accurate) calculations can be fould elsewhere. i am merely giving an overview, showing the basic concept.
To Sum Things Up
I know this has been a long post but i really wanted to go through just what exactly soaks up damage. i know that on a 1 to 1 ratio, health points can be seen and understood universally among everyone. if a mob hits a tank for 3k damage, that's 3k health gone. but what they do not see is that the mob usually hits everyone else for 8k damage and that the tank is often parrying or dodging attacks more than half of the time. they dont see that. dps usually does not see that. it is really only the tank and healers who really see this mechanic at work. why else would a boss 1hit a warlock to death? but dps doesnt see that and calls himself a squishy. sure, he's truly a squishy, but he doesnt exactly know why or how or what it all really means.
AND in order to help ease the minds of these misguided dps, the tanks do not take the time to explain all of this to the dps. instead, they appease the dps by gemming for stamina, enchanting for stamina, use health/stamina enhancing armorkits and drink elixirs of mighty fortitude. The tanks end up trying to make the dps and healers feel a little more at ease by enhancing the only number the dps and healers can actually see but because of this, they leave little room, if any, for other stats like armor and avoidance.
True, as people gear up, they will encounter gear with higher amounts of stamina and armor. so why bother when you already have 560 defense rating and a billion armor points? shouldnt they be entitled to spread out their stats with more stamina/health? well with better armor comes more stamina anyway, so the inverse can also be argued. why not gem defense when you now have more stamina? see what i did there?
But instead, i see bear tanks gemming for stamina. I see dk's gemming for stamina. i see paladins and warriors gemming for stamina. and as a healer, i always have to cringe at these tanks. i hate, as much as i complain about boring heroic runs, i hate healing 50k health tanks who stack stamina. i constantly have to heal them. there is really no break for me at all in heroics when healing these guys. this takes a toll on the healer (so the dps, although they feel really comfortable running along with a 50k health tank, they dont realize that there is less time and mana for me to heal them should they need any kind of healing) and when we get into harder fights where there's collateral damage, aoe damage, or just random damage, i find little time to heal the dps or myself.
ATTENTION ALL TANKS: THERE ARE BETTER STATS THAN STAMINA!!!
For bears:
Gem for Agility. Agility (Agi) will increase your armor. with the bear shapeshift multiplier to armor, you get even more armor per point of agi than the other plate wearing classes would.
Agi also increases your dodge percentage. this is your only aviodance stat, so beef (or bear) it up as much as you can with agi. Its really easy for bears. we only need one stat to deal with.
For plate wearers:
Gem for Defense even past the crit immune level (currently at 535 for heroics and 540 for raids). The more Defense (Def) you have, the more you're able to dodge and parry at the very least. not only will you increase your chance to avoid a hit, you're also giving yourself a Def buffer should you get a better piece of gear with less Def but having more Armor/Stam/Dodge/Parry/etc.
You cannot gem for Armor, but you can enchant and use armor kits for more armor. However, i would try to go for the best piece of gear with the highest built-in armor, gem for defense, enchant it with stats, armsman, or threat.
For both bears and plate wearers: There are plenty of resources online. I know things can be confusing and information can be scattered over the internet. but the information is out there. If you have any questions or need directions on where to go for your class, please feel free to reply and i will try my best to point you in the right direction.
Also, there is the argument about magical damage ignoring all armor and even avoidance. In this case, if armor and avoidance are negated, then a thinking person would indeed switch out his gear and use some magic resistance gear or stamina gear. Now if the fight was a mix of mostly physical hits with some magic damage, then the thinking person will have to evaluate which he prefers to mitigate and which would be more important to mitigate on the whole of the fight. you can always change gear after the fight to suit the needs of the next fight.
Again, to all tanks, there are better stats that just stamina. to all dps and maybe healers, there are much better ways to guage and judge a tank than by his health pool.
I zone into an instance and see four other players, one of which is the tank. now the very first thing i look at is who's the tank, and so i can set my focus on him. i rarely look at his HP if im dps, but i will glance at it if i was healing him. His health will give me a guage of exactly how much attention i have to give to him while healing the instance. that's basically it. i dont check his gear to see if he's crit immune, or check to see if he's even got the right types of gear on. i just take it by faith that the tank knows what he's doing, no matter the level of HP he may have.
Why do i say this is because i oftentimes find people commenting on the tank's health as the determining factor as to how well an instance will go, or if there are hiccups, who the first person to blame would be if we were to have to point fingers. of course, in a bad pull, the tank will usually die first, or if the tank has abilities on cooldown, the dps and healer may die before the tank has the opportunity to grab aggro. this happened to me the other night where adds aggroed and went straight for the AoE-ing dps and i couldnt do anything to stop them for maybe 4-5 seconds.
New tank
When people do see a tank with say, 25k health, a few things go through their minds, im sure. and one of these things is that the tank is "new". new to what? well, for a lot of people, they may assume the tank is "new" to tanking itself. a person new to tanking may be a liability for the group, as the dps and healer may feel like guinea pigs at this point. but the fact of the matter is everyone's learning, we just dont want them to learn while pugging with us, ESPECIALLY if they're tanks. correct? i mean we can deal with bad dps, or bad healing (even bad healing has its limits), but bad tanking is a no no. a new tanks, 25k health tanks all somehow equate to possibly bad tanks.
New 80
There are many who have been in the game for a while leveling their alt tank and barely reached 80. there are also others who have joined the game several months earlier and have finally made it to 80, ready to tank heroics. i've encountered many people who do 2k dps, heal wonderfully and tank like leetsauce who have just dinged 80 that day, the day before, or somethind during the same week. last week i had the experience of seeing one party member say, i just dinged 80 today, with three more people saying how they're new to 80 as well. i was the only one who couldnt say that. instead, i said i dinged 80 a year ago.
it was kind of refreshing to see fresh new 80s running heroics and not judging each other. what's funny, or sad, is that it's usually always the raiders who seem to compare and belittle everyone else. now i am not saying every raider does it. what i am saying is that when it does happen, its more likely than not, a raiding individual pugging his daily random heroic for his frosties.
So these tanks with 25k-ish health who just dinged 80 are often criticized for their low health, but my contention is why? that's usually what tanks had the day they started heroics when wrath came out. and that's a somewhat middle-ground. i started tanking at 23k health. and before ulduar hit, i had maybe 28k health at most. i struggled to even get close to 30k health. but now we see tanks with 40k health and think that everyone, upon reaching 80, should have those numbers. its almost infuriating to see people who really do not have any idea how overboard that number is. i mean think of it this way, if a new 80 tank were to tank normal utgarde keep or nexus, that's basically what a 40k health tank is like doing heroics.
The Fallacy of HP
I just came across a post this morning about effective health found here. Think Tank on Armor. He thinks about armor pretty much the same way i think about avoidance. it basically increases your effective health. now he has a pretty detailed example of how it relates to healing, and i cannot agree with him more about that. although in heroics, the amount of overpowered healing can bsically negate his claims, in raids, it is quite different. armor is king. avoidance is queen. and HP is the jester.... according to me.
Before we go on, i'd like to tell you my stand on HP. its subpar. it really is. anyone telling you to stack stamina as long as you have the minimum defense rating has no idea what he's talking about. it does make sense on its own tho. if you take everything else out of the equation, of course, the more stamina you have, the more damage you can take. but we live in a very multi-faceted world (of warcraft) and therefore, we have to take many other factors into consideration.
Note: the following examples will not include hard numbers but will describe the basic concept of the stats i will be talking about. if you want exact numbers please go to sites like elitist jerks or tankspot.
Mitigation: What Armor Does. the person who prioritizes armor when gearing will see a lot less damage per hit. overall, he might have more damage if he doesnt have enough avoidance. assuming that he's being healed sufficiently, his armor is negating a fair amount of the hits. the more armor he has, the less damage he takes per hit.
Example. Lets suppose a mob does an auto attack for 10k health. Lets suppose he only does auto attacks.
If the person taking the hits has zero armor on, each attack will damage him by 10k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 4th hit.
Lets say the person puts on armor (all other things being equal, including health, i know, not realistic, but this is to prove a point) so that he will negate 50% of the damage made to him.
If the person has armor to negate 50% damage, each attack will damage him by 5k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 8th hit.
Now consider that each hit from the mob takes 1 second. if he had zero armor, he would die in 4 seconds. if he had 50% damage mitigation from armor, he will die after 8 seconds. (i just made a quick example of TTL, or time to live).
Armor increases TTL, reduces damage taken per hit and makes life for the healers a whole lot easier.
See how armor works there? HP isnt really the "end all" of all tanking stats. by all means no. lets move on to the next item.
Avoidance: Total Avoidance is the sum of several stats, including Dodge, Parry, and Block. These stats are the basis of helping a tank NOT take damage. What i mean is a dodged attach will hit for zero damage. a parried attack will hit for zero damage. block is a different animal and has its own damage reduction amounts and things. but we know for sure one thing, dodge and parry negates 100% of any hit.
So lets take block out of the equation to make things simpler and pretend we're talking about DK tanks or bear tanks.
Lets take the tank from the Armor example and say he has 40k health, with 50% damage mitigation from armor. that is what we'll work with.
Lets say it's a DK with a dodge percentage of 24% and a parry percentage of 21%. This gives the DK a total of 45% avoidance.
This means that 45% of the mobs attack will not hit the dk at all. With some math here, we can estimate that per swing, the mob will get about 2750 damage. since each swing is 1 second apart, the tank will essentially take 2750 damage per second. with a tank of 40k health, it will take the mob 14.55 seconds to kill the tank.
Now 14.55 seconds is better than 8 seconds (armor only) and a whole lot better than 4 seconds (no mitigation).
Note/Edit: Please note that avoidance is on "chance per swing" and not an actual percentage of damage reduction. because of this, if you get unlucky and get hit on all swings, your TTL will actually be 8 seconds. If you're lucky and are missed on all swings, your TTL will be indefinite, or forever. Because of this reasoning, a more statistical analysis will have to be done, as in, if each hit from a boss has a 45% chance to miss (55% chance to land), what's the probability that the tank will survive for 15 seconds? i believe this will result in some z-score and bell curve with deviations and such. but if all swings were to be distributed evenly, i would give the tank about 15 seconds to live. again, more complex (and more accurate) calculations can be fould elsewhere. i am merely giving an overview, showing the basic concept.
To Sum Things Up
I know this has been a long post but i really wanted to go through just what exactly soaks up damage. i know that on a 1 to 1 ratio, health points can be seen and understood universally among everyone. if a mob hits a tank for 3k damage, that's 3k health gone. but what they do not see is that the mob usually hits everyone else for 8k damage and that the tank is often parrying or dodging attacks more than half of the time. they dont see that. dps usually does not see that. it is really only the tank and healers who really see this mechanic at work. why else would a boss 1hit a warlock to death? but dps doesnt see that and calls himself a squishy. sure, he's truly a squishy, but he doesnt exactly know why or how or what it all really means.
AND in order to help ease the minds of these misguided dps, the tanks do not take the time to explain all of this to the dps. instead, they appease the dps by gemming for stamina, enchanting for stamina, use health/stamina enhancing armorkits and drink elixirs of mighty fortitude. The tanks end up trying to make the dps and healers feel a little more at ease by enhancing the only number the dps and healers can actually see but because of this, they leave little room, if any, for other stats like armor and avoidance.
True, as people gear up, they will encounter gear with higher amounts of stamina and armor. so why bother when you already have 560 defense rating and a billion armor points? shouldnt they be entitled to spread out their stats with more stamina/health? well with better armor comes more stamina anyway, so the inverse can also be argued. why not gem defense when you now have more stamina? see what i did there?
But instead, i see bear tanks gemming for stamina. I see dk's gemming for stamina. i see paladins and warriors gemming for stamina. and as a healer, i always have to cringe at these tanks. i hate, as much as i complain about boring heroic runs, i hate healing 50k health tanks who stack stamina. i constantly have to heal them. there is really no break for me at all in heroics when healing these guys. this takes a toll on the healer (so the dps, although they feel really comfortable running along with a 50k health tank, they dont realize that there is less time and mana for me to heal them should they need any kind of healing) and when we get into harder fights where there's collateral damage, aoe damage, or just random damage, i find little time to heal the dps or myself.
ATTENTION ALL TANKS: THERE ARE BETTER STATS THAN STAMINA!!!
For bears:
Gem for Agility. Agility (Agi) will increase your armor. with the bear shapeshift multiplier to armor, you get even more armor per point of agi than the other plate wearing classes would.
Agi also increases your dodge percentage. this is your only aviodance stat, so beef (or bear) it up as much as you can with agi. Its really easy for bears. we only need one stat to deal with.
For plate wearers:
Gem for Defense even past the crit immune level (currently at 535 for heroics and 540 for raids). The more Defense (Def) you have, the more you're able to dodge and parry at the very least. not only will you increase your chance to avoid a hit, you're also giving yourself a Def buffer should you get a better piece of gear with less Def but having more Armor/Stam/Dodge/Parry/etc.
You cannot gem for Armor, but you can enchant and use armor kits for more armor. However, i would try to go for the best piece of gear with the highest built-in armor, gem for defense, enchant it with stats, armsman, or threat.
For both bears and plate wearers: There are plenty of resources online. I know things can be confusing and information can be scattered over the internet. but the information is out there. If you have any questions or need directions on where to go for your class, please feel free to reply and i will try my best to point you in the right direction.
Also, there is the argument about magical damage ignoring all armor and even avoidance. In this case, if armor and avoidance are negated, then a thinking person would indeed switch out his gear and use some magic resistance gear or stamina gear. Now if the fight was a mix of mostly physical hits with some magic damage, then the thinking person will have to evaluate which he prefers to mitigate and which would be more important to mitigate on the whole of the fight. you can always change gear after the fight to suit the needs of the next fight.
Again, to all tanks, there are better stats that just stamina. to all dps and maybe healers, there are much better ways to guage and judge a tank than by his health pool.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
On Dealing with Asshats
1. http://paladinwithin.blogspot.com/2010/07/behavior-in-groups-towards-tanks.html
2. http://csahf.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-not-just-tanks-that-are-idiots-it.html
I am merely going to point to the above posts as the point and response of my post today. In both blog entries, the bloggers state specifically about their annoyances with other group members who decide that their group members play the game for their own benefit. I would gather that many of these guys are kids and not adults. but I could be wrong. this topic has been addressed previously in my posts about tanking and why it has tanked for me (tanked is a term used to describe something failing, dying, or droping. tanking in WoW is a term used to describe the activity of maintaining the computer enemy's "hate" towards you. the more hate they have for you, the more they will attack you and not the healer).
As many of you know, I play all roles in this game. There are three dps (named because of what they do, namely, they produce high damage per second (dps) for the group, as opposed to the tank and healer), one healer whose job is to heal everyone. EVERYONE. and a tank, who holds the attention of the computer mobs. So in heroics, as we call it, five people enter and attempt to be victorious in their endeavors there.
The mechanics of the group fight is simple. The tank will run into a group of mobs (computer controlled, mobile objects) and does his abilities to keep the mob's attention. then the dps will start their attack and take down the mob's health until it does. the healer will heal the tank primarily, himself secondly and the dps lastly. the idea behind this set of priority is simple. if the tank dies, the mobs will wipe the group. if the healer dies, the tank will eventually die and then the mobs will wipe the group. if the dps dies, then it just takes longer to kill the mobs.
Now this is how groups should work, with everyone doing their job to get to the bosses and complete the instance. the problem occurs when people, behind the veil of anonymity and the safety of their own home, decides to be jerks in the game and demand people to play the game their way. and with the invention of the random dungeon finder, this has gotten to the point where people sometimes forget that they are playing with four other human beings, especially when the human beings are from different servers.
The dungeon finder is a great invention, actually. it was made to put groups together automatically, so that the tank can just queue up as a tank, or the dps can queue up as dps, be automatically put into a group, and when the group has all the elements of being a group (1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps), they get sent to a random dungeon. Now this process works within I set of realms, meaning the person I could be grouped with could be from a different realm than me. more often than not, this is the case. and because this is the case, there's almost no incentive for anyone who felt that they were being treated disrespectfully to hunt down the perpetrators. Instead, they just need to get over it, move on, vent, and add the idiot to the ignore list.
I know I've put several people on ignore before. they are not worth the hassle to party with again. they're usually from different servers, of course, as being on the same server would be too close for comfort and they would shut up. they're usually the people who can perform well, as in, be in great gear and produce high dps, or they have the more "important" role. my contention with this is that everyone has an important role. some people might think being the tank or the healer is more important than being a dps, but I find that each role has the same level of importance and each deserving the same levels of respect. what I don’t like are the tanks who think they are god's gift, or the healer who has to mention about how great their healing is (shamans usually =P) or the dps who does twice as much damage as everyone else. sometimes it's necessary to remind jerks that they are simply not that important. the above links show just how easy it is to really ignore the jerks, let him be the spoild child behind the computer and move on.
- bad tank? boot and get a new one. refuse to heal and have a dps switch specs/gear and tank instead.
- bad dps? boot. let him die a few times, then boot. or let him spice up the chat box before he leaves. let him pull with no healing or tank taunting. no one needs his pompous ass anyway.
- bad healer? boot. or get a new one. ignore his requests to gogogogogo. instead, take your time. it is, after all, to his best interest that the tank doesn’t die and at least one dps is alive to finish killing the mobs. otherwise, it would just take longer.
- run with friends. the "kick" feature is more highly used when playing with friends, especially with Immortelle. She's pretty kick-happy. She'll check your gear score and say to everyone, a 5k gear score mage should not be doing 4k dps. but then again, Immy does 6k dps just goofing off. as of writing, she and her guild is one boss away from "Light of the Dawn".
As mentioned above, there is a "kick" feature in instances where you can actually kick a player from the group. I say, use it! usually its saved up for when the group cant stand the idiot anymore. but sometimes I find that we tolerate them too much, which only encourages them to be even bigger jerks in their next instance. this is sort of a way to condoning their behavior. our apathy leads to their brazeness. sounds logical. because it is a game, many of us behind the computer screen will tolerate some asshattery here and there for the sake of time, or to save the trouble of finding a replacement. sometimes the boot needs to hit the butt quicker, and that asshat needs to be sent out of the dungeon. maybe if enough people deal with it this way, we will have less idiots demanding the group to play their way, or according to their standards.
I could mention stories of the many times I've come across asses in the game, but its really useless internet garbage no one really cares to read. you have enough examples from the above links. sometimes I dealt with it, other times I didn’t care much. many times, when I do decide to kick someone, its after I've had enough of their idiocy. there have been many times where I, when tanking, had to tell the dps or the healer if they didn’t like the speed of my pulls, they can pull and tank it themselves. that usually shuts them up. or they leave.
So with all that said, i think everyone will come across these idiots in time and when they do, they will know the possible ways to deal with the situation. when playing in a game where you're randomly added to a group there is bound to be differences, preferences and expectations. everyone plays this game differently, after all. you can group them into several different categories, but remeber that this is only the nature of the beast. people will need to realize that they arent playing with their guildies, or their friends. Rather, they are playing with strangers who may have different motives and goals than they do. it is up to us all to use the tools given to us in-game to deal with the people who we find unsavory, or jerks.
2. http://csahf.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-not-just-tanks-that-are-idiots-it.html
I am merely going to point to the above posts as the point and response of my post today. In both blog entries, the bloggers state specifically about their annoyances with other group members who decide that their group members play the game for their own benefit. I would gather that many of these guys are kids and not adults. but I could be wrong. this topic has been addressed previously in my posts about tanking and why it has tanked for me (tanked is a term used to describe something failing, dying, or droping. tanking in WoW is a term used to describe the activity of maintaining the computer enemy's "hate" towards you. the more hate they have for you, the more they will attack you and not the healer).
As many of you know, I play all roles in this game. There are three dps (named because of what they do, namely, they produce high damage per second (dps) for the group, as opposed to the tank and healer), one healer whose job is to heal everyone. EVERYONE. and a tank, who holds the attention of the computer mobs. So in heroics, as we call it, five people enter and attempt to be victorious in their endeavors there.
The mechanics of the group fight is simple. The tank will run into a group of mobs (computer controlled, mobile objects) and does his abilities to keep the mob's attention. then the dps will start their attack and take down the mob's health until it does. the healer will heal the tank primarily, himself secondly and the dps lastly. the idea behind this set of priority is simple. if the tank dies, the mobs will wipe the group. if the healer dies, the tank will eventually die and then the mobs will wipe the group. if the dps dies, then it just takes longer to kill the mobs.
Now this is how groups should work, with everyone doing their job to get to the bosses and complete the instance. the problem occurs when people, behind the veil of anonymity and the safety of their own home, decides to be jerks in the game and demand people to play the game their way. and with the invention of the random dungeon finder, this has gotten to the point where people sometimes forget that they are playing with four other human beings, especially when the human beings are from different servers.
The dungeon finder is a great invention, actually. it was made to put groups together automatically, so that the tank can just queue up as a tank, or the dps can queue up as dps, be automatically put into a group, and when the group has all the elements of being a group (1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps), they get sent to a random dungeon. Now this process works within I set of realms, meaning the person I could be grouped with could be from a different realm than me. more often than not, this is the case. and because this is the case, there's almost no incentive for anyone who felt that they were being treated disrespectfully to hunt down the perpetrators. Instead, they just need to get over it, move on, vent, and add the idiot to the ignore list.
I know I've put several people on ignore before. they are not worth the hassle to party with again. they're usually from different servers, of course, as being on the same server would be too close for comfort and they would shut up. they're usually the people who can perform well, as in, be in great gear and produce high dps, or they have the more "important" role. my contention with this is that everyone has an important role. some people might think being the tank or the healer is more important than being a dps, but I find that each role has the same level of importance and each deserving the same levels of respect. what I don’t like are the tanks who think they are god's gift, or the healer who has to mention about how great their healing is (shamans usually =P) or the dps who does twice as much damage as everyone else. sometimes it's necessary to remind jerks that they are simply not that important. the above links show just how easy it is to really ignore the jerks, let him be the spoild child behind the computer and move on.
- bad tank? boot and get a new one. refuse to heal and have a dps switch specs/gear and tank instead.
- bad dps? boot. let him die a few times, then boot. or let him spice up the chat box before he leaves. let him pull with no healing or tank taunting. no one needs his pompous ass anyway.
- bad healer? boot. or get a new one. ignore his requests to gogogogogo. instead, take your time. it is, after all, to his best interest that the tank doesn’t die and at least one dps is alive to finish killing the mobs. otherwise, it would just take longer.
- run with friends. the "kick" feature is more highly used when playing with friends, especially with Immortelle. She's pretty kick-happy. She'll check your gear score and say to everyone, a 5k gear score mage should not be doing 4k dps. but then again, Immy does 6k dps just goofing off. as of writing, she and her guild is one boss away from "Light of the Dawn".
As mentioned above, there is a "kick" feature in instances where you can actually kick a player from the group. I say, use it! usually its saved up for when the group cant stand the idiot anymore. but sometimes I find that we tolerate them too much, which only encourages them to be even bigger jerks in their next instance. this is sort of a way to condoning their behavior. our apathy leads to their brazeness. sounds logical. because it is a game, many of us behind the computer screen will tolerate some asshattery here and there for the sake of time, or to save the trouble of finding a replacement. sometimes the boot needs to hit the butt quicker, and that asshat needs to be sent out of the dungeon. maybe if enough people deal with it this way, we will have less idiots demanding the group to play their way, or according to their standards.
I could mention stories of the many times I've come across asses in the game, but its really useless internet garbage no one really cares to read. you have enough examples from the above links. sometimes I dealt with it, other times I didn’t care much. many times, when I do decide to kick someone, its after I've had enough of their idiocy. there have been many times where I, when tanking, had to tell the dps or the healer if they didn’t like the speed of my pulls, they can pull and tank it themselves. that usually shuts them up. or they leave.
So with all that said, i think everyone will come across these idiots in time and when they do, they will know the possible ways to deal with the situation. when playing in a game where you're randomly added to a group there is bound to be differences, preferences and expectations. everyone plays this game differently, after all. you can group them into several different categories, but remeber that this is only the nature of the beast. people will need to realize that they arent playing with their guildies, or their friends. Rather, they are playing with strangers who may have different motives and goals than they do. it is up to us all to use the tools given to us in-game to deal with the people who we find unsavory, or jerks.
Monday, July 19, 2010
New Guild on Ravenholdt (RH)
I just wanted to mention to my readers that i have found a guild to join on Ravenholdt US. The people seem really cool and i would love to join them in their adventures.
I plan to have four of my 80 characters in the guild. So far, i've logged on to two and have gotten invites. I've actually been a bit lazy to get on my other two toons to get them invited. i'll do that when i actually need to log on to them!
So far in the guild:
Devyn, my dps/tank DK, who leveled through wrath as a tank, in tanking spec only. no dps. the dps sucked, but i lived through everything while leveling. instance-wise, i did struggle a bit in the beginning (running utgarde keep, nexus, anh kahet and azjol nerub were hellishly annoying) but gotten a whole lot better in terms of gear when i hit level 75ish. so tanking violet hold and drak tharon keep were pretty easy. once i reached 80, i began tanking (and, unfortunately, went through the whole beginner tanking experience like i did with utgarde keep, again. this time in heroics) normal level 80 instances and then heroics. got my def to 535 (actually it was 525, with a sigil that gave me 11 def whenever i used icy touch to make it 535. this works out as i usually use icy touch in the beginning of the fights anyway). Then i switched over to DPS and LOVE LOVE LOVE it even more. I went frost dps with the two weaons, one on each hand, and a total makeover of all my gear. gearing was easy, but queueing up for instances as a dps sucked. in any case, i have pretty good emblem gear and should be able to do decently in ICC10 if ever asked to join.
(this got me annoyed this past saturday as the guild was asking for people from their saturday run, and i said i could go while on Devyn, but never received any kind of invite. instead, i saw maybe six people in ICC, with the rest of the people pugged. maybe they missed my comment. i should have repeated my statement. oh well. there's always next week i guess. as the new person in the guild, i would expect to be ignored? probably. there's probably better people in /trade they can pug with anyway. Instead, i hopped on Diinky and had a great time running one of our brand new dinged 80 warlocks through a few instances. she had a blast, at least i hoped she did.)
Diinky, my pve/pvp resto drood, joined as well. as you can see from the above statement! she's pretty decently geared. not too great, but still enough to push out about 2,400 per rejuv tick. i havent done much pvp on her lately, as i find it pretty mundane (maybe i should try arenas!) and instead, rush off to doing randoms and trying to help one of my friends get her tanking gear, and whoever else who needs a healer. i dont know anywhere else to get better gear tho. maybe i can get the 4pc t9. i currently have 2pc t8 and 2pc t9. that combo seems pretty good to me. but the ability for my rejuv ticks to crit might be more of a raid healing kinda thing. i do like extra swiftmend and extra nourish. at least, that's what matters more for me in heroics anyway. hopefully i can get some gear out of running more heroics, and maybe grab a frost emblem piece somewhere. i love playing this character despite the boredom because i do enjoy the occassional "awesome heals!" or "epic heals man" and the like. =P
space
space
To be in the guild eventually (if things go well, ofc):
Brooke, my prot paladin. She leveled through outland and northrend as prot and has gotten quite good at tanking. when she first hit 80, she went to do heroics immediately. got a bunch of compliments about how the dps (ToC was out, but i think ICC was just about to launch) could not pull aggro off of me, ever. i had 23k hp then, gemmed with avoidance (no, im not a stam stacker and hate healing those stam stackers). had some basic weapons from lv.80 instances and a titansteel shield wall. i then bought my first two emblem of triumph pieces and got a bit more comfortable tanking at around 30k hp. i now have a bit more hp, but still, trying NOT to priortize HP over Def/expertise/agi. i'll blog about those stats vs stam one day. maybe i can get some feedback from healers on what they prefer healing, or just go on plusheal.com since i know my readers are not healers. ahem! but anyway, moving on.
Akeelah, my affl lock. Happily spamming Seed of Corruption in every instance. loving the AoE dps and the high numbers. and getting decent numbers on bosses. knows to stack some dots and 2 shadowbolts before using Haunt, using Curse of elements much more than Curse of Agony, and lifetapping like crazy since i dont have dark pact, nor will really need it due to health returns from Haunt and healers' heals. sorry for the rambling. im hungry. its lunch time. my apologies.
I may have mentioned this before, but may have not, is that i want to gear Akeelah up in Heroic gear only. This means that I will not buy emblem gear. I will only use the drops that come from heroic instances and the other normal, but difficult, instances like ToC, Forge, Pit and Halls. I may end up being able to do some heroic TOC, forge, pit and halls. but that's later on. i do know that Halls is SRSBZNS. so i'll dps that when i do get decent gear. but it does seem like everyone needs to be way beyond "heroic' geared for that one. there's just craziness involved in those fights and if people can CC property, use the right auras/totems and dps the right people down first, the fight will be a whole lot easier. /end halls of reflection tangent. so as much as possible, i will have ilevel200 gear, and some that are, i think 219 and 223. or something like that. emblems of triumph will be unused until later on i guess. when i need to if i ever become a regular raid dps. but as far as i can see, i dont think i'll be playing ranged dps in raids.
So in the end, i'd like to see how well akeelah's gear can outperform other dps with better gear. i purposely limit her gear so that i can prove, mainly to myself, and maybe to others, that gearscore isnt what makes your dps rise (although its just partial) but that your own skill and practice will help you find your best dps. once you get into that "high dps" zone, you'll never want to leave it. but it takes some work to get there. i do know there are certain limitations to every class and some classes will naturally (all things being equal) outperform others. bliz lied when they say all classes are withing 5% of each other. that is their goal, but certainly not our reality.
This is my pre-lunch update. off to lunch. and hopefully be back to essplane my plans for devynity on Ysondre. that's about it for now! laters!
I plan to have four of my 80 characters in the guild. So far, i've logged on to two and have gotten invites. I've actually been a bit lazy to get on my other two toons to get them invited. i'll do that when i actually need to log on to them!
So far in the guild:
Devyn, my dps/tank DK, who leveled through wrath as a tank, in tanking spec only. no dps. the dps sucked, but i lived through everything while leveling. instance-wise, i did struggle a bit in the beginning (running utgarde keep, nexus, anh kahet and azjol nerub were hellishly annoying) but gotten a whole lot better in terms of gear when i hit level 75ish. so tanking violet hold and drak tharon keep were pretty easy. once i reached 80, i began tanking (and, unfortunately, went through the whole beginner tanking experience like i did with utgarde keep, again. this time in heroics) normal level 80 instances and then heroics. got my def to 535 (actually it was 525, with a sigil that gave me 11 def whenever i used icy touch to make it 535. this works out as i usually use icy touch in the beginning of the fights anyway). Then i switched over to DPS and LOVE LOVE LOVE it even more. I went frost dps with the two weaons, one on each hand, and a total makeover of all my gear. gearing was easy, but queueing up for instances as a dps sucked. in any case, i have pretty good emblem gear and should be able to do decently in ICC10 if ever asked to join.
(this got me annoyed this past saturday as the guild was asking for people from their saturday run, and i said i could go while on Devyn, but never received any kind of invite. instead, i saw maybe six people in ICC, with the rest of the people pugged. maybe they missed my comment. i should have repeated my statement. oh well. there's always next week i guess. as the new person in the guild, i would expect to be ignored? probably. there's probably better people in /trade they can pug with anyway. Instead, i hopped on Diinky and had a great time running one of our brand new dinged 80 warlocks through a few instances. she had a blast, at least i hoped she did.)
Diinky, my pve/pvp resto drood, joined as well. as you can see from the above statement! she's pretty decently geared. not too great, but still enough to push out about 2,400 per rejuv tick. i havent done much pvp on her lately, as i find it pretty mundane (maybe i should try arenas!) and instead, rush off to doing randoms and trying to help one of my friends get her tanking gear, and whoever else who needs a healer. i dont know anywhere else to get better gear tho. maybe i can get the 4pc t9. i currently have 2pc t8 and 2pc t9. that combo seems pretty good to me. but the ability for my rejuv ticks to crit might be more of a raid healing kinda thing. i do like extra swiftmend and extra nourish. at least, that's what matters more for me in heroics anyway. hopefully i can get some gear out of running more heroics, and maybe grab a frost emblem piece somewhere. i love playing this character despite the boredom because i do enjoy the occassional "awesome heals!" or "epic heals man" and the like. =P
space
space
To be in the guild eventually (if things go well, ofc):
Brooke, my prot paladin. She leveled through outland and northrend as prot and has gotten quite good at tanking. when she first hit 80, she went to do heroics immediately. got a bunch of compliments about how the dps (ToC was out, but i think ICC was just about to launch) could not pull aggro off of me, ever. i had 23k hp then, gemmed with avoidance (no, im not a stam stacker and hate healing those stam stackers). had some basic weapons from lv.80 instances and a titansteel shield wall. i then bought my first two emblem of triumph pieces and got a bit more comfortable tanking at around 30k hp. i now have a bit more hp, but still, trying NOT to priortize HP over Def/expertise/agi. i'll blog about those stats vs stam one day. maybe i can get some feedback from healers on what they prefer healing, or just go on plusheal.com since i know my readers are not healers. ahem! but anyway, moving on.
Akeelah, my affl lock. Happily spamming Seed of Corruption in every instance. loving the AoE dps and the high numbers. and getting decent numbers on bosses. knows to stack some dots and 2 shadowbolts before using Haunt, using Curse of elements much more than Curse of Agony, and lifetapping like crazy since i dont have dark pact, nor will really need it due to health returns from Haunt and healers' heals. sorry for the rambling. im hungry. its lunch time. my apologies.
I may have mentioned this before, but may have not, is that i want to gear Akeelah up in Heroic gear only. This means that I will not buy emblem gear. I will only use the drops that come from heroic instances and the other normal, but difficult, instances like ToC, Forge, Pit and Halls. I may end up being able to do some heroic TOC, forge, pit and halls. but that's later on. i do know that Halls is SRSBZNS. so i'll dps that when i do get decent gear. but it does seem like everyone needs to be way beyond "heroic' geared for that one. there's just craziness involved in those fights and if people can CC property, use the right auras/totems and dps the right people down first, the fight will be a whole lot easier. /end halls of reflection tangent. so as much as possible, i will have ilevel200 gear, and some that are, i think 219 and 223. or something like that. emblems of triumph will be unused until later on i guess. when i need to if i ever become a regular raid dps. but as far as i can see, i dont think i'll be playing ranged dps in raids.
So in the end, i'd like to see how well akeelah's gear can outperform other dps with better gear. i purposely limit her gear so that i can prove, mainly to myself, and maybe to others, that gearscore isnt what makes your dps rise (although its just partial) but that your own skill and practice will help you find your best dps. once you get into that "high dps" zone, you'll never want to leave it. but it takes some work to get there. i do know there are certain limitations to every class and some classes will naturally (all things being equal) outperform others. bliz lied when they say all classes are withing 5% of each other. that is their goal, but certainly not our reality.
This is my pre-lunch update. off to lunch. and hopefully be back to essplane my plans for devynity on Ysondre. that's about it for now! laters!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Forum Trolls and real id
Before i begin, i just want to say that thsi post is related to RealID. So if you're sick of reading about RealID, then you can stop here. but if you want to hear what i have to say about this, then sure, feel free to read on.
As many of you may know, there has been much outcry about having our real names out in the official forums (if you post in the forums, you will post with your real id) and bliz has responded by changing their minds. now there has been a lot of theories as to why bliz even did this and one of them is that it will reduce forum trolling since real id, in a way, removes a layer or several layers of anonymity from forum posters. those who would spend their efforts trolling others will have to think twice about trolling.
I would like to take it a step further and say that everyone has the ability to troll the forums, in-game, or anywhere else for that matter. the reason i think this is true is because i do believe everyone is evil. come again? i think everyone is inherently evil. we are not "good' by nature. we are evil by nature. so how do i kinda prove this to myself? consider the popular formula depicted below. it shows a "normal" person (whatever that is) that's given two things and he turns into a monster. Anonymity and an Audience.
As many of you may know, there has been much outcry about having our real names out in the official forums (if you post in the forums, you will post with your real id) and bliz has responded by changing their minds. now there has been a lot of theories as to why bliz even did this and one of them is that it will reduce forum trolling since real id, in a way, removes a layer or several layers of anonymity from forum posters. those who would spend their efforts trolling others will have to think twice about trolling.
I would like to take it a step further and say that everyone has the ability to troll the forums, in-game, or anywhere else for that matter. the reason i think this is true is because i do believe everyone is evil. come again? i think everyone is inherently evil. we are not "good' by nature. we are evil by nature. so how do i kinda prove this to myself? consider the popular formula depicted below. it shows a "normal" person (whatever that is) that's given two things and he turns into a monster. Anonymity and an Audience.
Many of you may have seen this before, so i will not go into too much details about the diagram. but i will say that there is something missing from the equation. namely, the left side. what? well there's something missing from it that makes the normal person "normal". would you guess it to be societal rules, values, mores, taboos and all sorts of other sociology term that i've learned.
but lets get straight to my point. that normal person wouldnt be there if it werent for teaching, discipline and fear of being outcasted or rejected by his own society. but i would say that it is mainly, 99% mainly that the fear of being rejected by his own society is what keeps him acting like a "normal" person. because, after all, normal means being like everyone else, acting in a way to fit in. and you cant fit into a society where people are respected, treated well and given preference at times by being a "Total Fuckwad". So take away these boundaries (by adding Anonymity and adding an Audience... see what i did there?) and you will get a person that exemplifies what a human being is meant to be. a total fuckwad.
This brings me back to my original thought, which is that people are inherently evil. to all the people that say kids are awesome, kids are great, kids are lovely.... i tell them to have their own damn kids and tell me if they think kids are awesome, great, lovely, etc. they are not. they are monsters. from the very beginning, they know how to be selfish, how to grab at things, how to cry to get what they want, and when they realize they can cry some more to eventually get what they cannot get initially, they will do it. this is the reason my own daughter throws a fit, especially when grandma is there, because she has a higher chance of getting what she wants if she does throw a fit. and she will almost certainly gets what she wants if she throws a fit when grandma is there. and she knows it. she takes advantage of it. she's evil.
Lets talk about the word "inherent". it means something like, instinctual, having a quality built-in, or its nature. webster.com gives is a consise definition. what this means is that the quality we are talking about is, indeed, built-in and whatever it is we are talking about cannot exist without that built-in characteristic.
So when i say people are inherently evil, i mean they do not need to learn evil to be evil. nor do they need to be encouraged to do evil to be evil. humans just are. humans are taught from a very early age (most i know at least) that what they do is "bad" and that they need to stop doing it. they are then taught to do "good" things as imposed and rewarded by society. children are always taught to say thank you and to share. they do not need to be taught to be selfish or to take what they want. Kids arent obeying, honest and selfless creatures we see in the world. teachers and mothers know better. they are monsters who sometimes follow the rules. we enforce these rules through a punishment and reward system. so kids comply and when they grow up, use these same principles on their own monsters.
Again, i'd like to reiterate the point (i know, that was redundant), that people are inherently evil. now you see my point of view and how i justify it, you ask yourself, what the hell does this have to do with realid? well it doesnt. it has to do with people's perception of solving the "troll" problem in forms and the fuckwad problem, in general, on the internet. it is not to remove the layer of anonymity. anonymity only removes the possibility of being "punished' personally for being ourselves. and to remove this anonymity, we open the fuckwads to the possibility of being "punished" in some way. and since this possibility of being punished is out there, the fuckwads will have less incentive to post trollish things on the wow forums. this is probably the thinking. but this is definitely not the answer. fuckwads will remain fuckwads. they will just unite under another banner. they will be the fuckwads, patting each other on the back for their douchebaggery and enforcing "evil" on the internet by rewarding each other. people's inherent nature will always be inherent to them. after all, that is what makes us human. someone said "to err is human". i say he's ignoring the true statement, that people are evil, and evil actions will be considered an error.
the ideal solution would be to teach everyone to be civil to each other, treating everyone else like how you'd want to be treated. then, tell everyone that their character is what matters most, and that being douches on the internet shows a lack of character. then make them all believe that. and eventually, we'll have a society where everyone shows kindness and respect to one another. sure sure. ideal. the other ideal solution is to ban offenders. but even with banning, there has to be a standard. who's to say one statement is deemed offensive and another isnt? this gray area is what really makes it difficult to offer this soluiton.
in the end, in order to keep the good, we also take it with the bad. thats all we can really do when it comes down to it. because, after all, we believe that people are really good people and sometimes do bad things. but this isnt my argument. see the difference? in any case, forum trolls and innocent bystanders rejoice!! blizz will not throw the baby out with the bath water, as the saying goes!
in a nutshell (or in internet lingo, TL:DR) real id in forums will not fix the real problem. it only fixes the manifestation of the problem. to fix the real problem, you have to dig deeper and change each person individually. this, however, is an impossible feat.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Why Tanking Tanked still
First off, i cannot come up with a better title. sorry. But this is the third part of my posts on why tanking, for me, has tanked and why i would love to DPS forever and ever and ever. much to the chagrin of a few of my friends who enjoyed insta-queues and solid tanking, i've decided to stop tanking for a while. at least until everyone stops thinking that a tank with 25k health sucks (because, believe it or not, thats how a lot of people judge tanks). i am guilty of judging tanks by their health sometimes. this is one of the few reasons that i've decided to stop tanking.
Many of the reasons why i like tanking are a double edged sword. the more modern term (as popularized by a song) is "it cuts both ways". and here is why i believe tanking sucks for me. the reasons will be similar to the previous post, but it will have its own little angle.
1. DPS. Regarding dps in a group, i know tanks "should" be at the bottom. but since everyone's geared to the teeth (actually, about 4.5k gs, and should be doing about 3-4k dps in heroics) due to the whole triumph emblems dropping out of the sky like rain, tanks doing 1k dps are having a difficult time holding aggro vs. a happy-go-lucky, trigger happy dps who's just there trying to pass the time. he wouldnt even target what the tank is targetting, in fact, i've come across a bunch of dps (mainly hunters) who would purposely target the mob the tank is not targeting in order to see if he can burn down the mob before it reaches him. actually, it might be pretty fun for the overgeared hunter. but for the tank, it causes headaches. and with the increase in dps and with no one having the sense to actually slow down a bit if they're constantly pulling aggro, even with Vigilence, Hand of Salvation and various taunts, tanking becomes less fun.
i use my taunts for certain situations, and this includes overzealous dps. but i dont want to use my taunts entirely for them. there are certain fights where i know i'll get an add or two and will save the taunt for that (or charge, or intercept, or hand of reckoning, or deathgrip), but i wouldnt be able to use it anymore if a dps were to keep pulling aggro from me.
also, tanking as a warrior or druid requires a few seconds of charge-up time where they need to be able to do their damage, build up rage and maintain their aggro lead. many dps find it necessary to skip this step and move forward.
with that said, i think that the main issue here is NOT that tanks need more threat modifiers or that they need more dps to keep up since higher dps means higher threat (although this is one of the ways to solve it). The solution here is to have the dps WAIT. but no one's going to wait when they're stupidly overgeared for heroics and want to get their frosties ASAP. no one. so something in the system is causing this and it is causing me, who's stuck at around 4.5k gs, with a certain amount of health and dps, to keep up with everyone who thinks they're running with a 6.0k gs geared tank. impossible.
2. Planning/Leading. My second point is planning and leading a small group. back in the days where the LFD required actual converstaion, i was given the opportunity to talk to many people before the group actually started. this helped my planning in that i would know the makeup of my group, as well, the skill of some of the players. this lead my to decide how i would want to pace myself, if i can just do the instance silently or if i would have to stop to give directions. my pulls would be almost always the same but the pace might change depending on the situation.
also, i was able to build relationships with other players and i ended up getting used to how they dps/heal/slacked. the LFD system will not allow me to do much of that, if any. i do not know who my group members are beforehand, nor do i get to choose them (although LFD does try to balance everything out. i mean EVERYTHING. at least one ranged, one melee. no double classes unless its a tank and dps with the same class. or unless someone drops. but you will almost never find the same class of people running togehter. ever. two rogues? never. two dks? never. two shamans? never. unless one is dps and the other heals.)
and everyone expects to "gogogogogogo". i get this in so many groups. once i had to let a dps die and a healer drop because i wouldnt pull without everyone ready. they yelled at me and called me the worse tank ever. im glad i dont need any re-affirmation of my abilities from people. i see the results for myself and know im doing a good job.
3. Situation Awareness. Having situation awareness means i see whats going on in most cases and need to react. if i react too slowly, people will die. if i react too fast, no one cares. im only doing my job. situation awareness, for me, is really a personal issue at best. so with that said, i do have to watch my baby when she's running around, watch people to make sure they're not being stupid, and watch the patrols and mobs and puddles and void zones and fires and other bad things to make sure i stay alive.
all this watching requires energy. and frankly, i've just about lost all my energy watching other people. it does take a lot out of me to watch the screen. although its fun, and im not saying i dont like it, it's just too much. its been draining on me, personally, for quite a while. and this is why i enjoy dps sooooo much. because i can put blinders on and follow the tank. often, i do find myself saving the clothie or healer. but i find that im slowly letting go of that reaction. dps all the way baby!! and this leads me to my next point...
4. Responsibility for the well-being of the group. im basically sick of this. it takes a lot to pull correctly, to make sure my melee doesnt stand too close to the next group, to make sure the pathers dont pick up the healers, to make sure everyone is on the right mob. then there's the blame game in the end where someone said something about another being a fail this or a fail that. and then i have to decide whether its better to just drop group or kick the offender.
in most groups, i get to be guide or leader and its only because i am the tank. so with that title, i would have to decide what to do in certain situations. its great to have all this responsibility, but i tire of it. i really do. its not because i dont want it. i live and thrive for things like this. tanking fits me well because i think it helps me fulfill some of these roles and help me do it in a gaming environment. but i do see that i am tiring of the people and their "stupid" who i group with moreso than the byproducts of tanking. after much rambling and typing away, i do believe i got it. eureka!! people stink.
To close, all of the points above require effort. and sorry, im fresh out of effort. its not rewarding effort anymore. its just a fact that the face of heroics have changed for the worse, through the makeup of the group, the mechanics in finding a group and finally to the people behind the groups themselves. as much as i want to believe bliz is trying its best to group people of similar gear and output (not just gaer, but OUTPUT matters), we'll never really get to a point where its guaranteed that a new tank will get matched up with new dps and heals. i experienced just the opposite last night when my group consisted of a 6k gs dps, two 4.5k dps and a brand new, 2.5k gs tank. i healed it and it was a blast. but the one high gs dps did have to slow up a little. when using LFD, there is really no way to help sustain the quality of the group, as the group is formed at "random". and i say that loosely. even still, we can expect people to be jerks and drop, afk, or yell googogoogogogogogog. finally, the people need to change their approach to heroics. please know that you're joining a random with different people who may have different interests and needs apart from you. some just want to see what its like and others are just trying to get their daily frosties. some are on their alts and others decided to find a group 15 minutes before dinner starts. all of these people need to remember that they are play with others and that their action do effect the mood and satisfaction of this game for other people.
and that is why i do not like to tank anymore.
Many of the reasons why i like tanking are a double edged sword. the more modern term (as popularized by a song) is "it cuts both ways". and here is why i believe tanking sucks for me. the reasons will be similar to the previous post, but it will have its own little angle.
1. DPS. Regarding dps in a group, i know tanks "should" be at the bottom. but since everyone's geared to the teeth (actually, about 4.5k gs, and should be doing about 3-4k dps in heroics) due to the whole triumph emblems dropping out of the sky like rain, tanks doing 1k dps are having a difficult time holding aggro vs. a happy-go-lucky, trigger happy dps who's just there trying to pass the time. he wouldnt even target what the tank is targetting, in fact, i've come across a bunch of dps (mainly hunters) who would purposely target the mob the tank is not targeting in order to see if he can burn down the mob before it reaches him. actually, it might be pretty fun for the overgeared hunter. but for the tank, it causes headaches. and with the increase in dps and with no one having the sense to actually slow down a bit if they're constantly pulling aggro, even with Vigilence, Hand of Salvation and various taunts, tanking becomes less fun.
i use my taunts for certain situations, and this includes overzealous dps. but i dont want to use my taunts entirely for them. there are certain fights where i know i'll get an add or two and will save the taunt for that (or charge, or intercept, or hand of reckoning, or deathgrip), but i wouldnt be able to use it anymore if a dps were to keep pulling aggro from me.
also, tanking as a warrior or druid requires a few seconds of charge-up time where they need to be able to do their damage, build up rage and maintain their aggro lead. many dps find it necessary to skip this step and move forward.
with that said, i think that the main issue here is NOT that tanks need more threat modifiers or that they need more dps to keep up since higher dps means higher threat (although this is one of the ways to solve it). The solution here is to have the dps WAIT. but no one's going to wait when they're stupidly overgeared for heroics and want to get their frosties ASAP. no one. so something in the system is causing this and it is causing me, who's stuck at around 4.5k gs, with a certain amount of health and dps, to keep up with everyone who thinks they're running with a 6.0k gs geared tank. impossible.
2. Planning/Leading. My second point is planning and leading a small group. back in the days where the LFD required actual converstaion, i was given the opportunity to talk to many people before the group actually started. this helped my planning in that i would know the makeup of my group, as well, the skill of some of the players. this lead my to decide how i would want to pace myself, if i can just do the instance silently or if i would have to stop to give directions. my pulls would be almost always the same but the pace might change depending on the situation.
also, i was able to build relationships with other players and i ended up getting used to how they dps/heal/slacked. the LFD system will not allow me to do much of that, if any. i do not know who my group members are beforehand, nor do i get to choose them (although LFD does try to balance everything out. i mean EVERYTHING. at least one ranged, one melee. no double classes unless its a tank and dps with the same class. or unless someone drops. but you will almost never find the same class of people running togehter. ever. two rogues? never. two dks? never. two shamans? never. unless one is dps and the other heals.)
and everyone expects to "gogogogogogo". i get this in so many groups. once i had to let a dps die and a healer drop because i wouldnt pull without everyone ready. they yelled at me and called me the worse tank ever. im glad i dont need any re-affirmation of my abilities from people. i see the results for myself and know im doing a good job.
3. Situation Awareness. Having situation awareness means i see whats going on in most cases and need to react. if i react too slowly, people will die. if i react too fast, no one cares. im only doing my job. situation awareness, for me, is really a personal issue at best. so with that said, i do have to watch my baby when she's running around, watch people to make sure they're not being stupid, and watch the patrols and mobs and puddles and void zones and fires and other bad things to make sure i stay alive.
all this watching requires energy. and frankly, i've just about lost all my energy watching other people. it does take a lot out of me to watch the screen. although its fun, and im not saying i dont like it, it's just too much. its been draining on me, personally, for quite a while. and this is why i enjoy dps sooooo much. because i can put blinders on and follow the tank. often, i do find myself saving the clothie or healer. but i find that im slowly letting go of that reaction. dps all the way baby!! and this leads me to my next point...
4. Responsibility for the well-being of the group. im basically sick of this. it takes a lot to pull correctly, to make sure my melee doesnt stand too close to the next group, to make sure the pathers dont pick up the healers, to make sure everyone is on the right mob. then there's the blame game in the end where someone said something about another being a fail this or a fail that. and then i have to decide whether its better to just drop group or kick the offender.
in most groups, i get to be guide or leader and its only because i am the tank. so with that title, i would have to decide what to do in certain situations. its great to have all this responsibility, but i tire of it. i really do. its not because i dont want it. i live and thrive for things like this. tanking fits me well because i think it helps me fulfill some of these roles and help me do it in a gaming environment. but i do see that i am tiring of the people and their "stupid" who i group with moreso than the byproducts of tanking. after much rambling and typing away, i do believe i got it. eureka!! people stink.
To close, all of the points above require effort. and sorry, im fresh out of effort. its not rewarding effort anymore. its just a fact that the face of heroics have changed for the worse, through the makeup of the group, the mechanics in finding a group and finally to the people behind the groups themselves. as much as i want to believe bliz is trying its best to group people of similar gear and output (not just gaer, but OUTPUT matters), we'll never really get to a point where its guaranteed that a new tank will get matched up with new dps and heals. i experienced just the opposite last night when my group consisted of a 6k gs dps, two 4.5k dps and a brand new, 2.5k gs tank. i healed it and it was a blast. but the one high gs dps did have to slow up a little. when using LFD, there is really no way to help sustain the quality of the group, as the group is formed at "random". and i say that loosely. even still, we can expect people to be jerks and drop, afk, or yell googogoogogogogogog. finally, the people need to change their approach to heroics. please know that you're joining a random with different people who may have different interests and needs apart from you. some just want to see what its like and others are just trying to get their daily frosties. some are on their alts and others decided to find a group 15 minutes before dinner starts. all of these people need to remember that they are play with others and that their action do effect the mood and satisfaction of this game for other people.
and that is why i do not like to tank anymore.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Why Tanking Tanked too
When I began tanking, I had a very hard time getting my priorities right. Although I had the idea down (keep all the mobs attention on me) I was not able to execute it very well. I read through all of my spells and knew what they were for. I understood my talents, the mob's abilities and my role throughout the fights. I just didn’t "get it" until a little later on, when it clicked, and everything became automatic.
what I thought was my role was still clouded by the dps meter. I still tried to get as much damage as I can. and when I see healthbars drop, I attributed the cause to my awesome swipe or maul. however, swipe and maul does craptastic damage compared to other classes doing the damage. when I read the damage meters, I realize that I am at the very bottom, which is what it should be. but it didn’t click for me. no I thought I had some damage to do. but it wasn’t until I raided (when I was doing practically no damage) that I understood my role more completely. and I don’t raid often, if ever. but when I finally did, I was in Naxx, and it showed me just how much damage I was actually doing compared to people who are doing more than double my damage. and that's the major idea. most of the fights involved timed taunting by the tanks. other fights require me pulling certain mobs while the other tank pull other mobs. I found my job had very little to do with damage and more to do with management. this helped me understand the concept of tanking much better than any five man instance. and yet, I cant get myself to raid more (although if I had a day all to myself, I would raid).
as the lead of any group, the tank usually would be the one to plan out the pulls. I began by asking questions about each pull, but after a while, it got kinda tiresome and I decided I should just learn each pull as I go. for those of you who have no idea what a "pull" looks like, the dungeon/instance in wow are laid out in a way where mobs are found in packs. there are packs of two, three, four, etc. some move, some are stationary. it is the tank's job to simply decide where he needs to "pull" each group. sometimes he can run up to them, other times, he'll need to pull the group to himself or to a designated area. other times he needs to watch out for other mobs walking and know not to include them in the pull. sometimes he'll want to. with all of these, there is a little bit of planning involved. I like planning. There is an art to getting the mobs to do what you want it to do. The puzzle involves melee mobs, ranged mobs, and boss mobs. tanking involves a sense of awareness and quick reflexes you don’t usually need when playing dps. when playing a dps, im usually stuck watching my rotations, or my cooldowns, or the health of the mob I am currently targeting. however, with tanking, I not only have to watch all of the above, I also have to watch for stray mobs, for mobs I lose aggro on, for possible changes in the battle that would cause me to lose my healer, etc. with tanking, there's just so much more I have to think about and react to. I think it is much more dynamic than dps.
again, one of the main reasons why I like tanking is because I get to plan out my pulls. as well, I also need to plan out my abilities during the fights so that I can have something ready should anything go wrong. and there are many things that can go wrong. a dps doing too much dps. a healer's heal landing just a second too early. a patrol walking by because the dps was standing too close to their path. the healer disconnecting and I am left to try to take out as much as I can before I die. etc. stuff like that. what I hate about other tanks is that they don’t do half of what tanks are supposed to do. I get tanks who run into a group of mobs and decide to tank them where they stand, never caring about moving them around or anything. as a melee dps, I oftentimes wonder if they even know that if I were to enter the fight and stand behind the mob, I will pull aggro from another group. nope. they don’t think about that. also, they don’t face the group. its really dumb when everyone else can see adds hitting the tank or another dps and the tank is oblivious to it because he is NOT facing the group. sometimes I want to smack these tanks. anyway, planning the pulls involves positioning. I want to pull mobs towards me in a certain way, then position them where I can tank them and be able to see my party, or the pathing mobs should there be any. there are some pulls where I know there will be pathing mobs. what do I do? I save my taunt for that. in any case, again, the main idea here is planning. then positioning.
the next idea that I like about tanking is responsibility the tank has in regards to the well-being of the group as well as the pace of the instance itself. some tanks like to rush through things. others like to take it slow. I am somewhere in between where I simply watch my healer's mana and make sure they're keeping up well. sometimes I don’t stop much but when I do, its for a reason. I do want people to catch up and be part of the party. I don’t need to enter into a fight with only half of my group there. i do want to enter with full force, as I find it being more efficient and will get us through the fight faster. for the dps who keeps yelling gogoogogo, I want to slap them. or slow down a bit. lol
I am also the one responsible for most of the bad things that happen. and the only bad thing that happens in groups is when we die. so we start over again. but as we run back, we all have an idea of what went wrong and what we can do to fix the problem. I think that's a very important part of playing the game. it is in knowing what everyone can do to help everyone else out and end up with the victory. its there in the small scale in 5-man instances, but you will see it more in raids. although this is this a large responsibility (although the consequence is very small when messing up, and the major portion of the consequence is a social consequence more than anything else), it is a responsibility shared by both the tank and the healer. I think this is why tanks and healers have such a good relationship with each other (except for now that we have this random dungeon finder, and any tank/healer combination that could have blossomed into a good relationship, we find less and less of these matchups. it is simply the nature of the tool itself).
basically tanking helps me to lead a group. I set the pace. and the "fun" of the group depends really on my pace. also, if I mess up, the healer and dps will die. so I have a sense of responsibility towards others more than myself. finally, for each pull, I have to plan each one out. although going through heroics 100x times already, I don’t have to think about this anymore, as every pull becomes a variation of another, more basic pull, that, and they never change.
so this is why I liked the tanking aspect of the game. it was brand new to be for a while and it kept me playing this game a little longer, after the soloing to level portion of the game ended. I mean, after so many daily quests, I can only do so much else before I die of boredom. this part of the game was still new to me and I realized really quickly that tanking matched my personality much better than dps (ranged or melee) and healing. but healing comes in a close second!
My next post will be about why I got sick of tanking. yes, even though I have this matching personality to tanks, I did grow tired of it. more to come!
what I thought was my role was still clouded by the dps meter. I still tried to get as much damage as I can. and when I see healthbars drop, I attributed the cause to my awesome swipe or maul. however, swipe and maul does craptastic damage compared to other classes doing the damage. when I read the damage meters, I realize that I am at the very bottom, which is what it should be. but it didn’t click for me. no I thought I had some damage to do. but it wasn’t until I raided (when I was doing practically no damage) that I understood my role more completely. and I don’t raid often, if ever. but when I finally did, I was in Naxx, and it showed me just how much damage I was actually doing compared to people who are doing more than double my damage. and that's the major idea. most of the fights involved timed taunting by the tanks. other fights require me pulling certain mobs while the other tank pull other mobs. I found my job had very little to do with damage and more to do with management. this helped me understand the concept of tanking much better than any five man instance. and yet, I cant get myself to raid more (although if I had a day all to myself, I would raid).
as the lead of any group, the tank usually would be the one to plan out the pulls. I began by asking questions about each pull, but after a while, it got kinda tiresome and I decided I should just learn each pull as I go. for those of you who have no idea what a "pull" looks like, the dungeon/instance in wow are laid out in a way where mobs are found in packs. there are packs of two, three, four, etc. some move, some are stationary. it is the tank's job to simply decide where he needs to "pull" each group. sometimes he can run up to them, other times, he'll need to pull the group to himself or to a designated area. other times he needs to watch out for other mobs walking and know not to include them in the pull. sometimes he'll want to. with all of these, there is a little bit of planning involved. I like planning. There is an art to getting the mobs to do what you want it to do. The puzzle involves melee mobs, ranged mobs, and boss mobs. tanking involves a sense of awareness and quick reflexes you don’t usually need when playing dps. when playing a dps, im usually stuck watching my rotations, or my cooldowns, or the health of the mob I am currently targeting. however, with tanking, I not only have to watch all of the above, I also have to watch for stray mobs, for mobs I lose aggro on, for possible changes in the battle that would cause me to lose my healer, etc. with tanking, there's just so much more I have to think about and react to. I think it is much more dynamic than dps.
again, one of the main reasons why I like tanking is because I get to plan out my pulls. as well, I also need to plan out my abilities during the fights so that I can have something ready should anything go wrong. and there are many things that can go wrong. a dps doing too much dps. a healer's heal landing just a second too early. a patrol walking by because the dps was standing too close to their path. the healer disconnecting and I am left to try to take out as much as I can before I die. etc. stuff like that. what I hate about other tanks is that they don’t do half of what tanks are supposed to do. I get tanks who run into a group of mobs and decide to tank them where they stand, never caring about moving them around or anything. as a melee dps, I oftentimes wonder if they even know that if I were to enter the fight and stand behind the mob, I will pull aggro from another group. nope. they don’t think about that. also, they don’t face the group. its really dumb when everyone else can see adds hitting the tank or another dps and the tank is oblivious to it because he is NOT facing the group. sometimes I want to smack these tanks. anyway, planning the pulls involves positioning. I want to pull mobs towards me in a certain way, then position them where I can tank them and be able to see my party, or the pathing mobs should there be any. there are some pulls where I know there will be pathing mobs. what do I do? I save my taunt for that. in any case, again, the main idea here is planning. then positioning.
the next idea that I like about tanking is responsibility the tank has in regards to the well-being of the group as well as the pace of the instance itself. some tanks like to rush through things. others like to take it slow. I am somewhere in between where I simply watch my healer's mana and make sure they're keeping up well. sometimes I don’t stop much but when I do, its for a reason. I do want people to catch up and be part of the party. I don’t need to enter into a fight with only half of my group there. i do want to enter with full force, as I find it being more efficient and will get us through the fight faster. for the dps who keeps yelling gogoogogo, I want to slap them. or slow down a bit. lol
I am also the one responsible for most of the bad things that happen. and the only bad thing that happens in groups is when we die. so we start over again. but as we run back, we all have an idea of what went wrong and what we can do to fix the problem. I think that's a very important part of playing the game. it is in knowing what everyone can do to help everyone else out and end up with the victory. its there in the small scale in 5-man instances, but you will see it more in raids. although this is this a large responsibility (although the consequence is very small when messing up, and the major portion of the consequence is a social consequence more than anything else), it is a responsibility shared by both the tank and the healer. I think this is why tanks and healers have such a good relationship with each other (except for now that we have this random dungeon finder, and any tank/healer combination that could have blossomed into a good relationship, we find less and less of these matchups. it is simply the nature of the tool itself).
basically tanking helps me to lead a group. I set the pace. and the "fun" of the group depends really on my pace. also, if I mess up, the healer and dps will die. so I have a sense of responsibility towards others more than myself. finally, for each pull, I have to plan each one out. although going through heroics 100x times already, I don’t have to think about this anymore, as every pull becomes a variation of another, more basic pull, that, and they never change.
so this is why I liked the tanking aspect of the game. it was brand new to be for a while and it kept me playing this game a little longer, after the soloing to level portion of the game ended. I mean, after so many daily quests, I can only do so much else before I die of boredom. this part of the game was still new to me and I realized really quickly that tanking matched my personality much better than dps (ranged or melee) and healing. but healing comes in a close second!
My next post will be about why I got sick of tanking. yes, even though I have this matching personality to tanks, I did grow tired of it. more to come!
Why Tanking Tanked
I want to blog today about my overall play in wow over the past several years, of how it developed from one style of play (mainly dps, to healing and tanking) to another. I want to mention that this is just an introductory to what I really want to talk about, and that is why I took a break from tanking.
Now I started this game in October of 2007 as a human mage running around and using blink as my only way of gaining speed while running through the large world. from the getgo, I was an altaholic (a person who plays many characters) and decided to make myself a hunter, a warlock and a priest. these classes appealed to me in a certain way similar to my previous games. however, I didn’t realize it then, but these classes (hunter, warlock, priest, mage) played very different from the same classes in the other games that I've played. How it was different, was that there was much risk in starting combat. when I would play games like Gauntlet or Fable, or similar, the spells and attacks that I use would completely destroy the computer characters (mobs). Especially in gauntlet, I would be smashing the attack button without end because there were so many mobs, and each mob dies after one or three hits. but in WoW, most fights required a one-on-one approach. not only that, but there are tools for every class to use just in case the fight turned into a two-on-one affair. it took me a few days to get this right, as I started playing on a mage. I would die very often in the beginning due to constantly getting attacked by everything around me.
add to that an array of spells we can use, casting times for the caster, distance limitations, and low health (I was playing a mage, after all) it became a much more in-depth game where my decisions to attack a mob was considered very carefully. on this note, I'd like to add that anyone wanting to play this game should learn to play as a warlock, mage or rogue first. these guys are easy to kill, but have tools in their spellbook that make them hard to kill. if that made any sense. it will make you a better player, honestly.
so after about fourty levels of playing very carefully as a mage, I decided to play a more forgiving class. I switched to a hunter and played him til he was about level 60. it was a lot easier as a hunter, as I learned to use my pet to take most of my damage and learned feign death, jumpshots, distracting shots, and all these other different hunter tricks to use to get out of bad situations. but after 60 levels, things got a little boring as playing a hunter became nothing more than to send in your pet, then shoot from afar. that's it. collect loot and move on.
then I played a warlock. I was constantly sucking life/health out of my victims and giving it to me, so I was able to take a lot of damage as I play. it was one of the funnest classes I've ever played. but still, there was something about playing a warlock that got me bored after a while. so I quit.
I went and made a character on the horde side (in wow, there are two sides, horde and alliance. they are enemies and have different races. these two factions have the same classes of characters, but different races and starting areas.) my first horde character was a druid who leveled as a feral cat. a druid is a class that has a shapeshifting focus, where different abilities and specialities are obtained by our shapeshifted forms. the cat is a very agile and sneaky creature, and can produce a lot of damage up close. I like the way I can sneak up on things and destroy it before it can even respond. once killed, I slip right back into the shadows. this sounds just like another class in wow called the rogue. but there are differences.
in any case, I leveled this character all the way to level 70 at that time. and then leveled her to 80 when the expansion hit. yes, I made a female character. my mage, warlock and hunter have all been males.
I think the most important thing to note about this character is that I was not killing things from far away. as a hunter, I would stand back and shoot, as a mage and warlock, I would stand back and cast spells. but as a feral druid cat, I had to come up close. most of my attacks were instant (no casting) but had a slight cooldown due to my resource management. this keeps me from spamming too many attacks at once. instead, it forces me to choose my attacks wisely.
upon playing a druid, I realized that I am very much into playing a melee character. a melee is a physical attack up close, pronounced may-lay. a melee is a fight where people are fighting with their fists, swords, knives, battons, etc. it is not a fight where people are shooting at each other. that's a shootout. or a firefight. and a character in this game that specializes in close combat is considered a "melee" character. those who fight at range are called "ranged".
I know im doing a lot of vocab into my post. but this is because I realize there are a few people who do not play this game reading my blog. also, there's some who might not know the terms since they play like, once a week, or less.
in any case, in playing a feral druid, I was able to play as a cat and a bear. whoa! what's a bear got to do with this? well bears are supposed to be able to take big hits and still survive, while doing substantial damage. well kinda. in real life, bears hit like a truck. but in wow, bears hit like pansies. but they take lots of damage. so this is the tanking role in wow. and I've played as a tank from 70-80 and enjoyed it. when I started doing heroics, it was sort of difficult to really begin since everyone playing at that time was getting level appropriate gear. I loved that it was difficult to play, and I think that's the reason why I became pretty good at playing as a tank. it was difficult. healers had some trouble healing me. and I liked that. I can also get into the nitty… I gem for agi and not stam, etc. but I wont mention too much of that here.
in fact, I did so well in heroics I decided to do 10-man raids. this was the days Naxxramas was THE raid and we all went there to get better gear. I got nice shoulders from it. but other than that, I didn’t really get anything else to help my tanking. a hunter beat me on a roll for a staff. (rolling is what we do to determine who gets what if there are more than one person that wants a drop. so at one boss, a staff drops and both I and a hunter wanted the drop. of course, it was made for a druid, but the stats on the staff was also awesome for the hunter. I didn’t mind since it would improve his stats overall). in any case, harping about drops aside, I really enjoyed tanking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to level up four different tanking classes. in wow, there are a total of four classes that are able to perform as tanks. they include feral druids (in bear form), paladins, warriors and death knights. what's interesting about each of these classes is that they all use different resource managements (except for bears and warriors, with some minor differences between the two). I almost did it. Almost because I stopped short with the warrior. he's still level 65. but I plan to level him to 80 and hit the heroic circuit to gear him up…. next month!
and in gaining 4 tanks, I've learned pretty well how to tank, in general. the positioning, the taunts, the resource management, and all the little nuances and shortfall that comes with each tanking class. I find that paladins are the least involved (ie, easiest to use), and warriors the most involved. druids and dk's are in the middle due to their somewhat complicated resource system but ease of spell usage. now of the four, my favorite tanking class would have to be the paladin, not really because of their ease of use, but really because they have a shield. warriors also have this advantage. I think this keeps the damage steady. with druids, it is the same thing. the worse I think, would be the DK, as they tend to take a lot of damage when they do get hit. the spikiness of the deathknight(DK) damage really turns me off from this class, as well as the reaction from many healers about how they don’t like healing dks. actually, I've healed many tanks in my wow life and I've gotta say, DKs are the worse as well.
in any case, this is the end of my intro to my thoughts on tanking and how I got here. I believe there needs to be a bit of a history as to why I started tanking, or at least, how tanking fits me. I'll save that for the next post. as well, I think I'll also mention about why I stopped. I think this is really the purpose of the this and the next post…. why I don’t like tanking anymore.
-----------------------------
just a side note for all those who do not play wow, there is a part of the game where we enter dungeons as a group to kill harder bosses and get better rewards. what is required in all groups are characters from one of three roles. There should always be one tank (or the damage soaker and attention grabber). There should also be one healer. if you have two for any reason, one or both of the healer is a bad healer. there should never, NEVER be a need for two healers in a 5-man dungeon so long as everyone is appropriately leveled. the remaining three characters should be damage dealers. these damage dealers are called DPS, as they provide the dps or damage-per-second. we generally refer to characters by their role. tank. heals. dps. I don’t know why heals is plural. it just is.
in a dungeon (in wow, theyre also called instances), the tank starts the fight by grabbing the mobs' attention first. then the dps follow suit by attacking the mobs and the healer will react to most damage by healing. also, healers have this ability to "decurse" where they can remove a negative effect from characters in their party if they happen to be able to. bad healers don’t know how to use this. good healers will use this often. in any case, there's rules for every class as they contribute to the progression of the group. you'll have to pick it up as you go along.
Now I started this game in October of 2007 as a human mage running around and using blink as my only way of gaining speed while running through the large world. from the getgo, I was an altaholic (a person who plays many characters) and decided to make myself a hunter, a warlock and a priest. these classes appealed to me in a certain way similar to my previous games. however, I didn’t realize it then, but these classes (hunter, warlock, priest, mage) played very different from the same classes in the other games that I've played. How it was different, was that there was much risk in starting combat. when I would play games like Gauntlet or Fable, or similar, the spells and attacks that I use would completely destroy the computer characters (mobs). Especially in gauntlet, I would be smashing the attack button without end because there were so many mobs, and each mob dies after one or three hits. but in WoW, most fights required a one-on-one approach. not only that, but there are tools for every class to use just in case the fight turned into a two-on-one affair. it took me a few days to get this right, as I started playing on a mage. I would die very often in the beginning due to constantly getting attacked by everything around me.
add to that an array of spells we can use, casting times for the caster, distance limitations, and low health (I was playing a mage, after all) it became a much more in-depth game where my decisions to attack a mob was considered very carefully. on this note, I'd like to add that anyone wanting to play this game should learn to play as a warlock, mage or rogue first. these guys are easy to kill, but have tools in their spellbook that make them hard to kill. if that made any sense. it will make you a better player, honestly.
so after about fourty levels of playing very carefully as a mage, I decided to play a more forgiving class. I switched to a hunter and played him til he was about level 60. it was a lot easier as a hunter, as I learned to use my pet to take most of my damage and learned feign death, jumpshots, distracting shots, and all these other different hunter tricks to use to get out of bad situations. but after 60 levels, things got a little boring as playing a hunter became nothing more than to send in your pet, then shoot from afar. that's it. collect loot and move on.
then I played a warlock. I was constantly sucking life/health out of my victims and giving it to me, so I was able to take a lot of damage as I play. it was one of the funnest classes I've ever played. but still, there was something about playing a warlock that got me bored after a while. so I quit.
I went and made a character on the horde side (in wow, there are two sides, horde and alliance. they are enemies and have different races. these two factions have the same classes of characters, but different races and starting areas.) my first horde character was a druid who leveled as a feral cat. a druid is a class that has a shapeshifting focus, where different abilities and specialities are obtained by our shapeshifted forms. the cat is a very agile and sneaky creature, and can produce a lot of damage up close. I like the way I can sneak up on things and destroy it before it can even respond. once killed, I slip right back into the shadows. this sounds just like another class in wow called the rogue. but there are differences.
in any case, I leveled this character all the way to level 70 at that time. and then leveled her to 80 when the expansion hit. yes, I made a female character. my mage, warlock and hunter have all been males.
I think the most important thing to note about this character is that I was not killing things from far away. as a hunter, I would stand back and shoot, as a mage and warlock, I would stand back and cast spells. but as a feral druid cat, I had to come up close. most of my attacks were instant (no casting) but had a slight cooldown due to my resource management. this keeps me from spamming too many attacks at once. instead, it forces me to choose my attacks wisely.
upon playing a druid, I realized that I am very much into playing a melee character. a melee is a physical attack up close, pronounced may-lay. a melee is a fight where people are fighting with their fists, swords, knives, battons, etc. it is not a fight where people are shooting at each other. that's a shootout. or a firefight. and a character in this game that specializes in close combat is considered a "melee" character. those who fight at range are called "ranged".
I know im doing a lot of vocab into my post. but this is because I realize there are a few people who do not play this game reading my blog. also, there's some who might not know the terms since they play like, once a week, or less.
in any case, in playing a feral druid, I was able to play as a cat and a bear. whoa! what's a bear got to do with this? well bears are supposed to be able to take big hits and still survive, while doing substantial damage. well kinda. in real life, bears hit like a truck. but in wow, bears hit like pansies. but they take lots of damage. so this is the tanking role in wow. and I've played as a tank from 70-80 and enjoyed it. when I started doing heroics, it was sort of difficult to really begin since everyone playing at that time was getting level appropriate gear. I loved that it was difficult to play, and I think that's the reason why I became pretty good at playing as a tank. it was difficult. healers had some trouble healing me. and I liked that. I can also get into the nitty… I gem for agi and not stam, etc. but I wont mention too much of that here.
in fact, I did so well in heroics I decided to do 10-man raids. this was the days Naxxramas was THE raid and we all went there to get better gear. I got nice shoulders from it. but other than that, I didn’t really get anything else to help my tanking. a hunter beat me on a roll for a staff. (rolling is what we do to determine who gets what if there are more than one person that wants a drop. so at one boss, a staff drops and both I and a hunter wanted the drop. of course, it was made for a druid, but the stats on the staff was also awesome for the hunter. I didn’t mind since it would improve his stats overall). in any case, harping about drops aside, I really enjoyed tanking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to level up four different tanking classes. in wow, there are a total of four classes that are able to perform as tanks. they include feral druids (in bear form), paladins, warriors and death knights. what's interesting about each of these classes is that they all use different resource managements (except for bears and warriors, with some minor differences between the two). I almost did it. Almost because I stopped short with the warrior. he's still level 65. but I plan to level him to 80 and hit the heroic circuit to gear him up…. next month!
and in gaining 4 tanks, I've learned pretty well how to tank, in general. the positioning, the taunts, the resource management, and all the little nuances and shortfall that comes with each tanking class. I find that paladins are the least involved (ie, easiest to use), and warriors the most involved. druids and dk's are in the middle due to their somewhat complicated resource system but ease of spell usage. now of the four, my favorite tanking class would have to be the paladin, not really because of their ease of use, but really because they have a shield. warriors also have this advantage. I think this keeps the damage steady. with druids, it is the same thing. the worse I think, would be the DK, as they tend to take a lot of damage when they do get hit. the spikiness of the deathknight(DK) damage really turns me off from this class, as well as the reaction from many healers about how they don’t like healing dks. actually, I've healed many tanks in my wow life and I've gotta say, DKs are the worse as well.
in any case, this is the end of my intro to my thoughts on tanking and how I got here. I believe there needs to be a bit of a history as to why I started tanking, or at least, how tanking fits me. I'll save that for the next post. as well, I think I'll also mention about why I stopped. I think this is really the purpose of the this and the next post…. why I don’t like tanking anymore.
-----------------------------
just a side note for all those who do not play wow, there is a part of the game where we enter dungeons as a group to kill harder bosses and get better rewards. what is required in all groups are characters from one of three roles. There should always be one tank (or the damage soaker and attention grabber). There should also be one healer. if you have two for any reason, one or both of the healer is a bad healer. there should never, NEVER be a need for two healers in a 5-man dungeon so long as everyone is appropriately leveled. the remaining three characters should be damage dealers. these damage dealers are called DPS, as they provide the dps or damage-per-second. we generally refer to characters by their role. tank. heals. dps. I don’t know why heals is plural. it just is.
in a dungeon (in wow, theyre also called instances), the tank starts the fight by grabbing the mobs' attention first. then the dps follow suit by attacking the mobs and the healer will react to most damage by healing. also, healers have this ability to "decurse" where they can remove a negative effect from characters in their party if they happen to be able to. bad healers don’t know how to use this. good healers will use this often. in any case, there's rules for every class as they contribute to the progression of the group. you'll have to pick it up as you go along.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)