Last night was pretty amazing when it comes to tolerance levels. You see i died maybe 10 times in ZulG and we only faced two bosses.
But before we talk about the stupid deaths in ZulG, i just wanted to mention about my horrendous experience doing the chain quest leading up to it. Sure, most of you probably had no issues going through the whole thing, but i wanted to bang my head on the table a few times. first off, who was it? Mwumba wanted to escort me in spirit to STV. sure, i pick up her quest and then proceeded to the ferry terminal. erm... zepplin terminal. Things were fine and dandy as i arrived. there was the spirit of the troll chick standing next to me, a little over my left shoulder and in full size! well i was a little glad she was transparent. but hey, if her spirit was with me, why couldnt she be a little smaller? or even just have the top portion of body showing? that would be nice. i mount up and began to fly when the zep landed. turns out, she disappeared quickly after that. i flew all the way to the camp where i was supposed to go, the one right outside ZulG's entrance. I killed a bunch of serpents but could not, for the life of me, figure out how to re-summon the spirit troll chick. sucks. after many attemps and "inspecting" poisoned bodies with no effect, i began to wonder maybe i am missing something here. i dropped the quest and tried again. again i failed. again, a reset and it still didnt work. i then proceeded to hearth, then flew back to the original quest giver (hoping that maybe i can get some answers from the real person and not her spirit) but she would not mention the quest at all. grrrrr. So i flew back to STV and she returned! omg nice!
Then i walked off the boat onto the landing tower and she disappeared again. wtf? okay after walking down the stairs, she returned somehow. okay? blizz, this is stupid. then she goes on and says the same two comments/questions over and over and over again. somehow i wish i had not come back. but there she was, asking the same questions. in any case, i was not taking any chances so i walked the whole way across the way, killing a few serpents and some crocs along the way. after that, it was pretty smooth sailing as somehow, the spirit was able to fly with me when i mount up. yay!
until. i got. to the. quest with nessingwary. i went off to look for the panther and lo and behond, it found us! took my npc dwarf (honestly, a dwarf? why am i helping him?) and ran away. i proceeded to fly after it and figured out quite easily to follow the trail of smoke. sure enough we found the panther sleeping, of all things. aparently this is the second part of the bugged questchain because, instead of turning in the quest to pick up the next one, i killed the panther and started the RP. so far so good, or so i thought. then, i talked to the spirit chick and she told me to kill the panther. wtf? i just did. alas, i sat there and waited. and waited. and waited some more. finally, she respawned and i tried killing her again. didnt work. still no completion. after the fifth respawn and various tries at redoing the quest, a guildie said to relog. so i did, and it worked!
So i spent about an hour doing this chain quest that should have taken no more than 20 minutes. maybe 15. at least after that, i was able to complete the rest of the quests (saving the zombies, finding vol'jin) and pick up a couple for the ZulG instance. oh and i was able to queue for that instance as well! wait time for that dungeon was halved. ZulG dungeon experience to come shortly...
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
353s and so forth
I thought for a little about the new gear dropping from Zul G and Zul A. They're pretty much raid quality loot, at least from my standpoint. Anything better than 346 is raid level. Anything AT 346 is raid-ready. do we all agree? great. But why the epic gear already? in 5-man heroics? why not give us another raid? back in Wrath, we got Naxx first, then Ulduar, then ToC and that was when we got the instance that gave us purples in normal and heroics.
Aparently something is different this time around. In cata, we didnt get one raid with four wings. Instead we got three raids totaling the size of Naxx, or something like that. it may seem like a lot, but doing all three of the current raids is not much different than doing all four wings of Naxx, then Saph+KT. Clever of Blizz. I always figured Naxx could have been four or five different necropolises. That would have kept raids short (and now its even shorter that you can skip straight to Sapphiron and KT without going through any of the wings). In any case, it wasnt until we get ToC that normal heroics dropped level 219 epics. Yes, they were all purple. It was sort of an unreal experience going through it to gear up. Actually, people would run the normal version of the instance just farming for gear so that they can join raids in Ulduar or ToC (most people skipped Naxx at that point).
Maybe it is the fact that there are three, albiet short, raids already out. (just think, ulduar split into three or four sections, icecrown split into four, ToC with three different versions and in each version three different bosses, stuff like that). We now have a 5-man that will drop almost-raid loot. this is wonderful for two types of people. one, it is great for the raider who has been farming for a certain item to complete his 359 sets. One item that may have been missing could be a wand, or a trinket. The time commitment to this instance would be more since the individual will have to return to this dungeon, in heroic, daily to see if his item will drop. Although the instance may take about half the time as a raid might, he will be running it several times throughout the week to get his item. more time played, i say, and a win for blizzard ultimately.
Second, the new instances appeal to those who are bad. yes, it's the ones who are reliant on gear to boost their play, instead of relying on sound tactics, paying attention, understanding your class strengths vs. a certain encounter, etc. (aka. Skill). As i believe, having 346 in every slot makes a player more than able to participate in a raid. Having 359s will allow the player to more easily participate in a raid. Bosses will die faster, mana will be a little more plentiful, tanks will mitigate just a wee more and healers will be taxed less. That's the idea. But i do believe that there are those in the population who will irrationally say to themselves that they do not have "enough" gear to participate in raids although they are decked out in 346s.
The process of gearing and progression is simple. Go into a raid with your 346s, kill several bosses and equip the loot that will enchance your performance. after several weeks of this + valor points, you'll (collectively) be ready to take on the final boss of the encounter with zero guarantee of success, but at least you'll have a shot. But most of these people stand in bad or in front of the boss, dont know where to run during certain events in the fight, they are inefficient with mana, they dont use their cooldowns, trinkets or even some obscure abilitiy in their arsenal like an interrupt. in short, they play badly. in order to counter this bad play, they believe that they need better gear, when, in fact, they need to learn to play.
So for the two groups of people looking at these instance i am hoping there is a third group. the one that doesnt have all the time to raid (and i have very little excuse any more now that the raids are almost the size of normal dungeons. heck, think of HoO. you can call it a raid, tune it for 10/25 man and no one will know the difference), but would like to keep playing for some kind of progression can go to these two dungeons and somewhat progress. the drops will not be as juicy as the raid drops, but you can see clearly that the drops are far superior to the blues they're currently wearing, gemmed and enchanted.
With that, this double-edge sword just dropped yesterday (for the competent raider as well as the bafoon who blames everything on gear) in the form of Patch 4.1, more specifically Zul A and Zul G 5-mans. These encounters will be fun, challenging and rewarding. Let's not worry too much about the gear farming for these two instances, as i am sure i'll probably be running these instances over and over again on my alts just to get them geared up (as their gear is much more preferred over regular or heroic gear from the original cata dungeons). Lets worry more about enjoying this game and taking up the challenge as it should be. lets not forget that difficult content should be just that, difficult, and that there's no excuse to suck if you only have heroic-esque gear. heck, i only have heroic gear on my dk, with two 359 rep pieces, but i do plan on kicking butt in each of the two new instances. for me, as the guy who sees these two new instances as new do-able content (ie. not a raid) and a chance to improve on some pieces of gear, i'll enjoy maybe a month of this before i start to wonder what firelands (and its new questing zone) will be like.
Aparently something is different this time around. In cata, we didnt get one raid with four wings. Instead we got three raids totaling the size of Naxx, or something like that. it may seem like a lot, but doing all three of the current raids is not much different than doing all four wings of Naxx, then Saph+KT. Clever of Blizz. I always figured Naxx could have been four or five different necropolises. That would have kept raids short (and now its even shorter that you can skip straight to Sapphiron and KT without going through any of the wings). In any case, it wasnt until we get ToC that normal heroics dropped level 219 epics. Yes, they were all purple. It was sort of an unreal experience going through it to gear up. Actually, people would run the normal version of the instance just farming for gear so that they can join raids in Ulduar or ToC (most people skipped Naxx at that point).
Maybe it is the fact that there are three, albiet short, raids already out. (just think, ulduar split into three or four sections, icecrown split into four, ToC with three different versions and in each version three different bosses, stuff like that). We now have a 5-man that will drop almost-raid loot. this is wonderful for two types of people. one, it is great for the raider who has been farming for a certain item to complete his 359 sets. One item that may have been missing could be a wand, or a trinket. The time commitment to this instance would be more since the individual will have to return to this dungeon, in heroic, daily to see if his item will drop. Although the instance may take about half the time as a raid might, he will be running it several times throughout the week to get his item. more time played, i say, and a win for blizzard ultimately.
Second, the new instances appeal to those who are bad. yes, it's the ones who are reliant on gear to boost their play, instead of relying on sound tactics, paying attention, understanding your class strengths vs. a certain encounter, etc. (aka. Skill). As i believe, having 346 in every slot makes a player more than able to participate in a raid. Having 359s will allow the player to more easily participate in a raid. Bosses will die faster, mana will be a little more plentiful, tanks will mitigate just a wee more and healers will be taxed less. That's the idea. But i do believe that there are those in the population who will irrationally say to themselves that they do not have "enough" gear to participate in raids although they are decked out in 346s.
The process of gearing and progression is simple. Go into a raid with your 346s, kill several bosses and equip the loot that will enchance your performance. after several weeks of this + valor points, you'll (collectively) be ready to take on the final boss of the encounter with zero guarantee of success, but at least you'll have a shot. But most of these people stand in bad or in front of the boss, dont know where to run during certain events in the fight, they are inefficient with mana, they dont use their cooldowns, trinkets or even some obscure abilitiy in their arsenal like an interrupt. in short, they play badly. in order to counter this bad play, they believe that they need better gear, when, in fact, they need to learn to play.
So for the two groups of people looking at these instance i am hoping there is a third group. the one that doesnt have all the time to raid (and i have very little excuse any more now that the raids are almost the size of normal dungeons. heck, think of HoO. you can call it a raid, tune it for 10/25 man and no one will know the difference), but would like to keep playing for some kind of progression can go to these two dungeons and somewhat progress. the drops will not be as juicy as the raid drops, but you can see clearly that the drops are far superior to the blues they're currently wearing, gemmed and enchanted.
With that, this double-edge sword just dropped yesterday (for the competent raider as well as the bafoon who blames everything on gear) in the form of Patch 4.1, more specifically Zul A and Zul G 5-mans. These encounters will be fun, challenging and rewarding. Let's not worry too much about the gear farming for these two instances, as i am sure i'll probably be running these instances over and over again on my alts just to get them geared up (as their gear is much more preferred over regular or heroic gear from the original cata dungeons). Lets worry more about enjoying this game and taking up the challenge as it should be. lets not forget that difficult content should be just that, difficult, and that there's no excuse to suck if you only have heroic-esque gear. heck, i only have heroic gear on my dk, with two 359 rep pieces, but i do plan on kicking butt in each of the two new instances. for me, as the guy who sees these two new instances as new do-able content (ie. not a raid) and a chance to improve on some pieces of gear, i'll enjoy maybe a month of this before i start to wonder what firelands (and its new questing zone) will be like.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tanks and dps
I noticed lately that there are a lot of new tanks using the lfd tool. Actually, since the last weekend, and barring any guild groups that i may have joined, every LFD pug group comes with a new, or barely new tank. Some are new tanks due to switching specs, and learning the ropes on a character that normall DPS or heals. others are leveling up thier 80 and are slowly learning the fights from the point of view of a tank. this is great.
What i can deduce from this trend is that more and more dps will finally get to see what its like for a tank in a heroic setting. Although some dps may only see tanks as, simply, another dps with less damage but more armor. okay, less damage in most cases. but definitely with more armor. dps do see tanks as more like them and less like healers. in a way, this is true. and it brings a lot of people to switch specs or finally level that level 80 warrior they havent touched in six months.
but what does this all mean to the rest of us? this is not an influx of new tanks. no, if it was an influx to the already flowing and always dynamic tanking population of our battlegroup, then i am sure the dps queue times will drop from 30 minutes to 20, or even 15... maybe 10! but it hasnt. "always dynamic" is key, since i believe the population flow of tanks using the whole LFD tool adheres to the FIFO method of inventory management. or whatever accounting-related methodologies relates.
FIFO is simply an acronym for first-in-first-out. to help me illustrate, let's backtrack several months. shortly after the expansion hit, there was a big shakeup in the community as to who does what role. really, as some wrath tanks found out that they just arent the tanks they're cut out to be in wrath (and subsequently rolled dps) or the healers who had infinite mana in wrath simply couldnt handle the increased difficulty of healing Throne of the Tides... normal, people began switching around specs and characters in order to find the right fit for them. Some, however, moved from wrath to cata without much of a problem, including tanks and healers. DPS adjusted from spamming AoE spells to actually using a priority system. The planets may have alligned sometime during the past few months, but i was unaware. People were actually doing what they're supposed to--what they're designed to do. And those were the ones first in.
The tank would walk into a dungeon as a tank, with a tank's mentality and skillset. The same goes for the healers, who have since learned to cope with limited mana, expensive heals and sometimes stupid dps. The dps, likewise, learned that some folks really had to be crowd controlled, standing in bursting purple crap is bad and damage reduction cooldowns are just as important as damage increasing cooldowns. Interrupts skyrocketed to an all-time high. They played through the instances, got gear, got better, understood fights, learned what their limits are, when they can stand in bad and when they need to really run away. They learned fight mechanics and figured out what they had to do in their own role to make the encounter a successful encounter.
Then they moved on to heroics. Random dungeons that used to take 15 minutes in wrath now take about an hour in cata... or more. in any event, these guys eventually get better gear, earn rep gear and fill out the remaining slots with justice point gear. they move on to raiding or slow down on the heroic grind. they dont need anything else from JPs. they might need chaos orbs or something to improve their offspec gear, but the end result remains--they slowly stop running heroic pugs. they are the first outs.
The first ins and the first outs are one and the same. The process is cycled through so that the tanks, who started off with some 300-333 tanking gear became fully geared with 345's, some 359 rep and raid gear. And eventually, running the same heroics over again will not give them any significant gain. There is nothing left to upgrade through heroics or justice points. and so they leave the LFD population. they may end up coming back on an alt just to dps, or to heal. or maybe even to tank. but they do come back one way or another.
Let's assume for a moment that the rate of flow, or flow of tanks coming in (and ultimately going out) to use the LFD system is faster than the flow of DPS going through the system. i believe this to actually be the case due to the population imbalance of tanks to dps. lets use tanks to dps as our only comparison. you can also use healers in this, but the result will still be the same. tanks, who usually get instant queues will ultimately gain all the gear they need faster than healers or dps, even if they get absolutely zero drops from heroic pugs, they'll still get JPs which will turn into gear eventually. a tank can usually just gear himself up through the LFD in less than a week of play. no waiting. so they gear up and leave the population, a dare say, 200% faster than a dps who has to wait 30 minutes in the queue (and i wont even talk about the wait if the group turns out bad, its a double penalty for the dps).
So after a week, the tank leaves the LFD population. but the DPS is still there. see the problem? He'll be fully geared in about two weeks if he diligently waits. Maybe longer if he walks away to pee, only to come back and find out that he has missed his queue. then, he has to start all over. but lets not count all the little variables prolonging the dps' plight. lets just say he takes 2x longer to gear up. then, he'll be out of the LFD population cycle. okay. that's not so bad. but lets not forget the initial problem as to why he has these long waits in the first place. the entire wow population using the LFD is not exactly 1 tank for every 3 dps. its 1 tank for every 30 dps. or more. 30 is my guess.
Tangent: One solution to this is to change the group composition. Instead of three damage dealers, we can have four or five. this will make the groups a 6 or 7 man duneon experience. now 6 has a nice ring to it because it's an even number, but 7 is a little more obscure. we like multiples, and the fact that 7 is a prime number makes it that much more of an odd choice. in any case, this can solve the "flow" as well as the population imbalance in regards to dungeon groups.
Back to the topic at hand. what is the topic, btw? who knows. i was trying to talk about the significance of how the new tanks now are really just that, new. and i was trying to show how this came about, with FIFO and flow rates and population ratios and things like that. okay. got it.
Anyway, i am on my fourth DPS to level up to 85 (and consequently, to gear up until i cant go any further with heroics) and running her through normal dungeons. its a mage, level 81, tearing up the place with her sheep and blast wave and all that great stuff. but just for the orbs, i run heroics on my dps. the 30 minute waits remain. when we finally do get the group, half of the time the tank will say they're new, or learning, or never done this as tank or in a heroic. etc.
What i see is this. That after about six months since the expansion, the dps pool has finally cycled and they have now finally begain to gear their alts (some of which are tanks). Now this dps pool will include all the people who are comfortable as dps, leveling their various dps characters, and having finally run out of dps characters, are willing to finally level that tank they never had a chance to touch (because dps is sooo much fun, or that tanking is soooo much work, or whatevers).
I know... all that typing just to illustrate a flawed analysis and faulty hypothesis. but hey, its thursday, my boss is out of the office and i have nothing to do. have a great day everyone!
What i can deduce from this trend is that more and more dps will finally get to see what its like for a tank in a heroic setting. Although some dps may only see tanks as, simply, another dps with less damage but more armor. okay, less damage in most cases. but definitely with more armor. dps do see tanks as more like them and less like healers. in a way, this is true. and it brings a lot of people to switch specs or finally level that level 80 warrior they havent touched in six months.
but what does this all mean to the rest of us? this is not an influx of new tanks. no, if it was an influx to the already flowing and always dynamic tanking population of our battlegroup, then i am sure the dps queue times will drop from 30 minutes to 20, or even 15... maybe 10! but it hasnt. "always dynamic" is key, since i believe the population flow of tanks using the whole LFD tool adheres to the FIFO method of inventory management. or whatever accounting-related methodologies relates.
FIFO is simply an acronym for first-in-first-out. to help me illustrate, let's backtrack several months. shortly after the expansion hit, there was a big shakeup in the community as to who does what role. really, as some wrath tanks found out that they just arent the tanks they're cut out to be in wrath (and subsequently rolled dps) or the healers who had infinite mana in wrath simply couldnt handle the increased difficulty of healing Throne of the Tides... normal, people began switching around specs and characters in order to find the right fit for them. Some, however, moved from wrath to cata without much of a problem, including tanks and healers. DPS adjusted from spamming AoE spells to actually using a priority system. The planets may have alligned sometime during the past few months, but i was unaware. People were actually doing what they're supposed to--what they're designed to do. And those were the ones first in.
The tank would walk into a dungeon as a tank, with a tank's mentality and skillset. The same goes for the healers, who have since learned to cope with limited mana, expensive heals and sometimes stupid dps. The dps, likewise, learned that some folks really had to be crowd controlled, standing in bursting purple crap is bad and damage reduction cooldowns are just as important as damage increasing cooldowns. Interrupts skyrocketed to an all-time high. They played through the instances, got gear, got better, understood fights, learned what their limits are, when they can stand in bad and when they need to really run away. They learned fight mechanics and figured out what they had to do in their own role to make the encounter a successful encounter.
Then they moved on to heroics. Random dungeons that used to take 15 minutes in wrath now take about an hour in cata... or more. in any event, these guys eventually get better gear, earn rep gear and fill out the remaining slots with justice point gear. they move on to raiding or slow down on the heroic grind. they dont need anything else from JPs. they might need chaos orbs or something to improve their offspec gear, but the end result remains--they slowly stop running heroic pugs. they are the first outs.
The first ins and the first outs are one and the same. The process is cycled through so that the tanks, who started off with some 300-333 tanking gear became fully geared with 345's, some 359 rep and raid gear. And eventually, running the same heroics over again will not give them any significant gain. There is nothing left to upgrade through heroics or justice points. and so they leave the LFD population. they may end up coming back on an alt just to dps, or to heal. or maybe even to tank. but they do come back one way or another.
Let's assume for a moment that the rate of flow, or flow of tanks coming in (and ultimately going out) to use the LFD system is faster than the flow of DPS going through the system. i believe this to actually be the case due to the population imbalance of tanks to dps. lets use tanks to dps as our only comparison. you can also use healers in this, but the result will still be the same. tanks, who usually get instant queues will ultimately gain all the gear they need faster than healers or dps, even if they get absolutely zero drops from heroic pugs, they'll still get JPs which will turn into gear eventually. a tank can usually just gear himself up through the LFD in less than a week of play. no waiting. so they gear up and leave the population, a dare say, 200% faster than a dps who has to wait 30 minutes in the queue (and i wont even talk about the wait if the group turns out bad, its a double penalty for the dps).
So after a week, the tank leaves the LFD population. but the DPS is still there. see the problem? He'll be fully geared in about two weeks if he diligently waits. Maybe longer if he walks away to pee, only to come back and find out that he has missed his queue. then, he has to start all over. but lets not count all the little variables prolonging the dps' plight. lets just say he takes 2x longer to gear up. then, he'll be out of the LFD population cycle. okay. that's not so bad. but lets not forget the initial problem as to why he has these long waits in the first place. the entire wow population using the LFD is not exactly 1 tank for every 3 dps. its 1 tank for every 30 dps. or more. 30 is my guess.
Tangent: One solution to this is to change the group composition. Instead of three damage dealers, we can have four or five. this will make the groups a 6 or 7 man duneon experience. now 6 has a nice ring to it because it's an even number, but 7 is a little more obscure. we like multiples, and the fact that 7 is a prime number makes it that much more of an odd choice. in any case, this can solve the "flow" as well as the population imbalance in regards to dungeon groups.
Back to the topic at hand. what is the topic, btw? who knows. i was trying to talk about the significance of how the new tanks now are really just that, new. and i was trying to show how this came about, with FIFO and flow rates and population ratios and things like that. okay. got it.
Anyway, i am on my fourth DPS to level up to 85 (and consequently, to gear up until i cant go any further with heroics) and running her through normal dungeons. its a mage, level 81, tearing up the place with her sheep and blast wave and all that great stuff. but just for the orbs, i run heroics on my dps. the 30 minute waits remain. when we finally do get the group, half of the time the tank will say they're new, or learning, or never done this as tank or in a heroic. etc.
What i see is this. That after about six months since the expansion, the dps pool has finally cycled and they have now finally begain to gear their alts (some of which are tanks). Now this dps pool will include all the people who are comfortable as dps, leveling their various dps characters, and having finally run out of dps characters, are willing to finally level that tank they never had a chance to touch (because dps is sooo much fun, or that tanking is soooo much work, or whatevers).
I know... all that typing just to illustrate a flawed analysis and faulty hypothesis. but hey, its thursday, my boss is out of the office and i have nothing to do. have a great day everyone!
Monday, April 18, 2011
Quick Monday Update
I got a few things done over the weekend. But none of it is really important.
1. Healed another PUG on my druid.
2. Tanked for a guild group heroic. it was fun. but tanking is a bit too stressful for the rewards, atm.
3. DPS'd mindlessly still. but tried my best to avoid the fires.
4. Went and did a much smoother ICC. YES, ICC. as in Ice Crown Citadel. It was 25mans and going for heroic and acheivements. Hey, for the non-raiders, this is a nice change of pace from constant heroics. dont hate.
5. My archeology skill went up by 15, then i decided to gag myself with chloroform.
6. BH gave me a pvp neck, which i gave to my gf because she pvp's more than i do.
7. Sunday night became Glee Marathon night. Wow got pretty boring, really.
8. Contemplated making alliance toons. /barf
9. Deleted several never-played characters (all of which were alliance, on my first server).
10. Contemplated what to do. what to do.
Really, there's not much else for me to do in this game. some folks say raid, but i say i dont have the concentrated time necessary for 3 hours of raiding. I have no problems with 30-minute heroics, then a break. but this game is made for many different types of people. I think its best to take the parts that work for me and run with it. well i guess things are dulling down. honestly, the only other thing to really do is go through levels 1-60 again and experience the "new" world. that, and experience things from the alliance point of view. i guess i can make a new character. but if im questing, i think it will be best to make a character just to play by myself. my gf will want to level up asap, and that's great and all, but i already have five 85s and seven 80s. i really dont need to be in a hurry.
What didnt happen that i wish did happen:
1. Anzu drops his mount.
2. Keal drops his white chicken.
3. Alar drops ashes.
4. Attuman drops midnight.
5. Maly drops an azure drake.
6. Skadi drops a blue proto drake.
7. I get bitten in blood queen without fucking up the bites (note to self, if your target doesnt get bit, maybe he's already bitten). And how the hell, after the 7th week, can we NOT finally get the mount??? /sadness.
Have a great day everyone.
1. Healed another PUG on my druid.
2. Tanked for a guild group heroic. it was fun. but tanking is a bit too stressful for the rewards, atm.
3. DPS'd mindlessly still. but tried my best to avoid the fires.
4. Went and did a much smoother ICC. YES, ICC. as in Ice Crown Citadel. It was 25mans and going for heroic and acheivements. Hey, for the non-raiders, this is a nice change of pace from constant heroics. dont hate.
5. My archeology skill went up by 15, then i decided to gag myself with chloroform.
6. BH gave me a pvp neck, which i gave to my gf because she pvp's more than i do.
7. Sunday night became Glee Marathon night. Wow got pretty boring, really.
8. Contemplated making alliance toons. /barf
9. Deleted several never-played characters (all of which were alliance, on my first server).
10. Contemplated what to do. what to do.
Really, there's not much else for me to do in this game. some folks say raid, but i say i dont have the concentrated time necessary for 3 hours of raiding. I have no problems with 30-minute heroics, then a break. but this game is made for many different types of people. I think its best to take the parts that work for me and run with it. well i guess things are dulling down. honestly, the only other thing to really do is go through levels 1-60 again and experience the "new" world. that, and experience things from the alliance point of view. i guess i can make a new character. but if im questing, i think it will be best to make a character just to play by myself. my gf will want to level up asap, and that's great and all, but i already have five 85s and seven 80s. i really dont need to be in a hurry.
What didnt happen that i wish did happen:
1. Anzu drops his mount.
2. Keal drops his white chicken.
3. Alar drops ashes.
4. Attuman drops midnight.
5. Maly drops an azure drake.
6. Skadi drops a blue proto drake.
7. I get bitten in blood queen without fucking up the bites (note to self, if your target doesnt get bit, maybe he's already bitten). And how the hell, after the 7th week, can we NOT finally get the mount??? /sadness.
Have a great day everyone.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Joys of Healing Heroic PUGs
First one, Heroic Vortex Pinnacle!
I picked up healing once again! yay. now this blog can actually be useful for once (if you can read through all the QQ, that is). my first experience was with a few guildies and one pugger, which wasnt so bad. we had a raiding healer with us but she was asked to dps so i can practic some healing. we zoned into vortex pinnacle with me, my gf in her dk, a guildie tank, and a guildie shaman who's dpsing the fight. it was pretty intense up through the first boss. my gf took minimal damage, the tank took a lot of damage (and fell off the ledge several times) and the guildie shaman was doing pretty well as dps. after the first pull, i was pretty much OOM. everyone was alive, but i was OOM. You know that pull with the air elementals? all five of them? one was bound, so there were four at once hitting the tank. luckily, he was probably able to heal himself.
I got a little better with mana conservation after the first pull. We go down the first ramp, with each pull costing me about half my mana instead of all my mana. we slowly pushed towards the first boss and i actually drank, took mana potions and innervated myself after each pull. oh the fun of being mana starved!
at the first boss, i was at 50% mana going in. apparently my guildie figured i needed extra healing stress on my first time back! in any case, the damage was normalized after the first cyclone pull, and no one died. i was sitting at <10% mana for half the fight, but during that half of the fight, i really didnt need to heal much. I didnt even need to go treeoflife either, which is good because they look sooooo goofy healing.
anyway i was having a blast keeping the tank and the group up. it seemed that, not only were my heals hitting for a lot less and the mana costs were a lot more, the tank and group were taking a whole lot more damage than what i remembered in wrath. or maybe it was because everyone was overgeared in wrath. now although i was constantly healing in wrath dungeons (ABC of healing--Always Be Casting), i would usually never drop below 50% mana and my healing usually compensates for a lot of aoe damage that happens even in dungeons like H.HoR, or H.PoS. But in Cata heroics, my healing spells feel weak and overpriced, even for a decent group, where the tank knew how to tank and the dps knew how to stay out of bad, i still felt that my nourish wasnt helping much, my swiftmend (which used to be emergency) didnt do much, and my swiftness+HT (my other emergency) didnt really put much health back at all. i am not one of those who think tranquility is an emergency spell. sure it might be for 5-mans and some druids love it, but i find it very limiting. the amount of healing might be lovely, but channeling the spell limits me so much, i find it almost unusable, especially when i tried using it for a while, i'd break the channeling prematurely to do another, more important heal.
But anyway, my healing sucks, my mana efficiency sucks and my hope in all treekind began to erode.
and then the tank tells us he was tanking in healing gear. <.<
(oh and that i was also doing a great job for the first time back... right.)
So after he put his tanking gear back on, healing felt a lot better. even though i had craptastic healing touch and swiftmends, i found it a whole lot easier to heal. the fights became more mana efficient where i was able to heal several pulls without having to drink (except for those two pulls where we attack swirling wind things. its just fun trying to keep everyone up because damage was just everywhere.
Overall, boss fights were easy to heal, trash was a bit harder to heal and tanks in healing gear is pretty hard to heal... but not impossible. I welcome all the dps-geared tanks to come and give me a workout. well okay, maybe not. but at least i know if there are some who do come to tank with a couple of pieces of dps gear, i guess its okay. we'll be fine so long as they know how to tank.
And then, there is Heroic Stonecore.
After my first (mainly) successful stint at healing again, i decided to try my luck without my guildies. i grabbed my gf and we went on our way to another random heroic queue. My second try at healing heroics turned out to be stonecore. now every instance has their own bane, but this one has seven. yes seven. Four bosses and three types of trash groups that really makes this difficult. the first type is the group of five trash with Millhouse Manastorm. The second is the trash rock elemental. the third is the cultist trash after slabhide. add to that the meandering sentinels and the ogre and you have some of the most hated trash pulls in all of Cata.
First thing's first, the tank did not want to CC anything. after every pull, i was pretty low on mana. however, he did mark Millhouse with a Skull, so he wasnt completely clueless. but even there, i had to let one guy die. sorry ele shaman. you were good. but i cant keep everyone up.
on to the first boss and i was actually glad we were done with trash pulls. the boss was great until he did his crystal spit thing and out came the shards. my gf tried to blood boil them but did not get any help from any of the other dps. it all seemed like they were focusing on the boss. Death and decay has a long CD, so my gf could possible DnD down every other group of shards, but not every group.
So the first boss fight ended up with a wipe. first my gf dies, then one of the dps, then the other. the tank was last to die. he completely ignored the shards, or any other of the borers that were still running around. i dont know if he knew his team was in trouble. but i kinda figured he didnt like saving the day much. in any case, with nothing to save me from the shards, i died, then him. of course, he left the group. but that's okay. he wasnt a great tank anyway. someone who cant call out cc after the first pull, seeing that the healer was OOM, or help pick up deadly flying geods doesnt really deserve to move on in the instance. There wasnt even a word about who should do what. in any case, we figured most of it out for the second pull, which happened about 4 minutes later due to waiting for another tank. the short wait continues to prove my point that queuing while already in a dungeon is faster than queuing after you leave the group. but people still leave group whenever a tank would leave. too bad for them.
in any case, now that we know the shaman and priest (the other two dps) will not be assed to help with the geod shards, my gf decided to blood boil them on her own. any stray ones left will not pose much of a challenge to me. our second try was successful with a new warrior tank. people stayed out of the rumble/dust on the ground and adds were picked up pronto.
Anyway, moving on to the next trash pull. No one knows how to jump, aparently. Well i guess no one really knows that earthquak sucks. but then the priest got reminded that he can levitate people and so damage on the second rock dude was a bit less. still, the melee still took a lot of damage. but this wasnt due to the earthquakes as much as it was due to the shards. it looks as if these guys are able to summon one shard at a time, which blows up and kills people. but alas, the ranged dps, both of then, werent keen on this and we ended up getting hit by those shards several times. i actually spammed moonfire to get rid of two.
The dragon boss was easy peasy. everyone know crystal storm. everyone knew to get out of lava. everyone knew to stay away from the stupid shadows that shows you where the stalagmites will drop. and somehow, most of the people i was healing were in my LOS! a smooth fight, to say the least.
And then we get on to wiping on trash before Ozruk. I know ozruk. he's no softy. but the trash before him is pretty annoying. sentinels, omg they suck. so the first pull ended up being a two-group pull. how often does this happen? like every time i go there. someone always figures there's plenty of time to kill the sentinels. well one was able to get away and call for help. So two groups and two dead dps. not sure who anymore, but i knew there were some casualties. Oh and THAT pull forced me to finally pull out my tree form. Wow, the ugliness. You know my first post on this site ever? i take it back. I dont wanna be any kinda tree, ever.
So anyway, we get to Ozruk and the tank proceeds to "learn" the fight. obviously, only the tank was learning the fight. the other two ranged dps (magic dps right??) were not learning jack. they were paralized the whole duration of paralysis, which caused them 50k damage each time. and how often does he cast that? before every shatter, right? so each fight had a LOT of damage. the dps would suck below 5k dps because of the duration of the paralyze and the melee having to run out of shatter. so this was going to be a long fight no matter. what's very interesting is that each time i did a moonfire to get a dot on me, it didnt work. What i found out was that warriors' shield slam is able to dispell the spell reflect from Ozruk. well that was probably what caused the wipes all five times. Then i said im done and left.
At the end, the tank did learn to tank Ozruk well. The healer, well he figured he'd read up on why we failed (and found out). And the ranged dps who kept getting paralized? well i hope they find better groups where the healer and tank werent clueless to the mechanics.
I remember now why i stopped healing (and tanking) for a while. The job is almost a chore. i do like tanking and i do like healing. but when it comes to relaxing every night after work, i'd like to relax. and even if i die several times in an instance as dps, it's not as stressful of a death since, more likely than not, my existence in a group is trivialized by 67% anyway. and if you count total DPS, probably 80%.
I picked up healing once again! yay. now this blog can actually be useful for once (if you can read through all the QQ, that is). my first experience was with a few guildies and one pugger, which wasnt so bad. we had a raiding healer with us but she was asked to dps so i can practic some healing. we zoned into vortex pinnacle with me, my gf in her dk, a guildie tank, and a guildie shaman who's dpsing the fight. it was pretty intense up through the first boss. my gf took minimal damage, the tank took a lot of damage (and fell off the ledge several times) and the guildie shaman was doing pretty well as dps. after the first pull, i was pretty much OOM. everyone was alive, but i was OOM. You know that pull with the air elementals? all five of them? one was bound, so there were four at once hitting the tank. luckily, he was probably able to heal himself.
I got a little better with mana conservation after the first pull. We go down the first ramp, with each pull costing me about half my mana instead of all my mana. we slowly pushed towards the first boss and i actually drank, took mana potions and innervated myself after each pull. oh the fun of being mana starved!
at the first boss, i was at 50% mana going in. apparently my guildie figured i needed extra healing stress on my first time back! in any case, the damage was normalized after the first cyclone pull, and no one died. i was sitting at <10% mana for half the fight, but during that half of the fight, i really didnt need to heal much. I didnt even need to go treeoflife either, which is good because they look sooooo goofy healing.
anyway i was having a blast keeping the tank and the group up. it seemed that, not only were my heals hitting for a lot less and the mana costs were a lot more, the tank and group were taking a whole lot more damage than what i remembered in wrath. or maybe it was because everyone was overgeared in wrath. now although i was constantly healing in wrath dungeons (ABC of healing--Always Be Casting), i would usually never drop below 50% mana and my healing usually compensates for a lot of aoe damage that happens even in dungeons like H.HoR, or H.PoS. But in Cata heroics, my healing spells feel weak and overpriced, even for a decent group, where the tank knew how to tank and the dps knew how to stay out of bad, i still felt that my nourish wasnt helping much, my swiftmend (which used to be emergency) didnt do much, and my swiftness+HT (my other emergency) didnt really put much health back at all. i am not one of those who think tranquility is an emergency spell. sure it might be for 5-mans and some druids love it, but i find it very limiting. the amount of healing might be lovely, but channeling the spell limits me so much, i find it almost unusable, especially when i tried using it for a while, i'd break the channeling prematurely to do another, more important heal.
But anyway, my healing sucks, my mana efficiency sucks and my hope in all treekind began to erode.
and then the tank tells us he was tanking in healing gear. <.<
(oh and that i was also doing a great job for the first time back... right.)
So after he put his tanking gear back on, healing felt a lot better. even though i had craptastic healing touch and swiftmends, i found it a whole lot easier to heal. the fights became more mana efficient where i was able to heal several pulls without having to drink (except for those two pulls where we attack swirling wind things. its just fun trying to keep everyone up because damage was just everywhere.
Overall, boss fights were easy to heal, trash was a bit harder to heal and tanks in healing gear is pretty hard to heal... but not impossible. I welcome all the dps-geared tanks to come and give me a workout. well okay, maybe not. but at least i know if there are some who do come to tank with a couple of pieces of dps gear, i guess its okay. we'll be fine so long as they know how to tank.
And then, there is Heroic Stonecore.
After my first (mainly) successful stint at healing again, i decided to try my luck without my guildies. i grabbed my gf and we went on our way to another random heroic queue. My second try at healing heroics turned out to be stonecore. now every instance has their own bane, but this one has seven. yes seven. Four bosses and three types of trash groups that really makes this difficult. the first type is the group of five trash with Millhouse Manastorm. The second is the trash rock elemental. the third is the cultist trash after slabhide. add to that the meandering sentinels and the ogre and you have some of the most hated trash pulls in all of Cata.
First thing's first, the tank did not want to CC anything. after every pull, i was pretty low on mana. however, he did mark Millhouse with a Skull, so he wasnt completely clueless. but even there, i had to let one guy die. sorry ele shaman. you were good. but i cant keep everyone up.
on to the first boss and i was actually glad we were done with trash pulls. the boss was great until he did his crystal spit thing and out came the shards. my gf tried to blood boil them but did not get any help from any of the other dps. it all seemed like they were focusing on the boss. Death and decay has a long CD, so my gf could possible DnD down every other group of shards, but not every group.
So the first boss fight ended up with a wipe. first my gf dies, then one of the dps, then the other. the tank was last to die. he completely ignored the shards, or any other of the borers that were still running around. i dont know if he knew his team was in trouble. but i kinda figured he didnt like saving the day much. in any case, with nothing to save me from the shards, i died, then him. of course, he left the group. but that's okay. he wasnt a great tank anyway. someone who cant call out cc after the first pull, seeing that the healer was OOM, or help pick up deadly flying geods doesnt really deserve to move on in the instance. There wasnt even a word about who should do what. in any case, we figured most of it out for the second pull, which happened about 4 minutes later due to waiting for another tank. the short wait continues to prove my point that queuing while already in a dungeon is faster than queuing after you leave the group. but people still leave group whenever a tank would leave. too bad for them.
in any case, now that we know the shaman and priest (the other two dps) will not be assed to help with the geod shards, my gf decided to blood boil them on her own. any stray ones left will not pose much of a challenge to me. our second try was successful with a new warrior tank. people stayed out of the rumble/dust on the ground and adds were picked up pronto.
Anyway, moving on to the next trash pull. No one knows how to jump, aparently. Well i guess no one really knows that earthquak sucks. but then the priest got reminded that he can levitate people and so damage on the second rock dude was a bit less. still, the melee still took a lot of damage. but this wasnt due to the earthquakes as much as it was due to the shards. it looks as if these guys are able to summon one shard at a time, which blows up and kills people. but alas, the ranged dps, both of then, werent keen on this and we ended up getting hit by those shards several times. i actually spammed moonfire to get rid of two.
The dragon boss was easy peasy. everyone know crystal storm. everyone knew to get out of lava. everyone knew to stay away from the stupid shadows that shows you where the stalagmites will drop. and somehow, most of the people i was healing were in my LOS! a smooth fight, to say the least.
And then we get on to wiping on trash before Ozruk. I know ozruk. he's no softy. but the trash before him is pretty annoying. sentinels, omg they suck. so the first pull ended up being a two-group pull. how often does this happen? like every time i go there. someone always figures there's plenty of time to kill the sentinels. well one was able to get away and call for help. So two groups and two dead dps. not sure who anymore, but i knew there were some casualties. Oh and THAT pull forced me to finally pull out my tree form. Wow, the ugliness. You know my first post on this site ever? i take it back. I dont wanna be any kinda tree, ever.
So anyway, we get to Ozruk and the tank proceeds to "learn" the fight. obviously, only the tank was learning the fight. the other two ranged dps (magic dps right??) were not learning jack. they were paralized the whole duration of paralysis, which caused them 50k damage each time. and how often does he cast that? before every shatter, right? so each fight had a LOT of damage. the dps would suck below 5k dps because of the duration of the paralyze and the melee having to run out of shatter. so this was going to be a long fight no matter. what's very interesting is that each time i did a moonfire to get a dot on me, it didnt work. What i found out was that warriors' shield slam is able to dispell the spell reflect from Ozruk. well that was probably what caused the wipes all five times. Then i said im done and left.
At the end, the tank did learn to tank Ozruk well. The healer, well he figured he'd read up on why we failed (and found out). And the ranged dps who kept getting paralized? well i hope they find better groups where the healer and tank werent clueless to the mechanics.
I remember now why i stopped healing (and tanking) for a while. The job is almost a chore. i do like tanking and i do like healing. but when it comes to relaxing every night after work, i'd like to relax. and even if i die several times in an instance as dps, it's not as stressful of a death since, more likely than not, my existence in a group is trivialized by 67% anyway. and if you count total DPS, probably 80%.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thoughts on a few topics
On Looking For Dummies:
Er... i mean dungeon. LFD has been nice to me as of late. My groups have been wrought with much annoyances, mostly from guild groups. What i mean is this. I zone in with my gf to a random dungeon group and find three people of the same guild. of course, we're queueing as DPS b/c tanking and healing roles are ridiculously unrewarding (we feel like babysitters, really).
Now these guild groups will do one of two things. They either really suck, or they're really good with a chip on their shoulders. Both experiences suck hairy donkey balls. For the suckage teams, they usually either all quit when they cant do the first boss, or, continue to press on. After about five wipes or so, they declare that the two dps who arent in their guild must suck because we're not carrying them enough. In both cases everyone drops group. the first case better than the last because at least, we wouldnt have wasted our time after five+ wipes just to get to boss #2. I would have waited the three minutes to wait for a new random group of strangers if they were going to quit anyway.
The group of assholes who will check your gear, spec and credit report will continually chat while playing. they'll tell you that your gear sucks (why am i doing heroics anyway? to get gear, moron), or that our talent spec isnt optimal (for what? EJ's suggestion for raiding? dont be a tool, use your brains). These are the groups who have tanks that cannot keep their healers alive, ignore any kind of CC's and even some very obvious mob/boss mechanics. It also can include pets who aggro, mages who dont realize their sheeped mob has them on top of their aggro meter, boomkins who like to use typhoon for no fucking reason other than "its cool," and hunters who still dont know how misdirect works.
A little bit of background on why i like dps: It's less stress. It's fun, actually. and i do play this game for fun. The whole reason why it's fun is because there is less blame, basically, when anyone dies. there's less responsibilities. If i miss an interrupt, the healer needs to work harder. If i miss a decurse, the healer needs to work harder. If i stand in bad, the healer might have to work harder. And if i die because i stood in poop, well, it's my own damn fault. I know that. I do not have any responsibilities to anyone really. Even though i have CC duties, decurse duties, aggro responsibilities, etc, they are not as pressing as a tank's or healer's duties.
For the tank, he has to make sure all the mobs that are supposed to be tanked are on him and not on others, that there is a kill order and that nothing touches the healer (treat the healer like your wifey, basically). Variables such as bad CCer's, CC breakers, and randomtargetingHuntard or rainoffireonlyLock or noMindFreezeDK makes this difficult. The 5k dps, fully geared ilevel 246 dont know how to play their class or with a group damage dealer is a little bit of dead weight but can be worked around. but being stupid like the above may cause more stress than enjoyment.
For the healer, same as above. but it is as so much a problem if you dont mind letting a few of the dps die sometimes. however, the first comments from the dps isnt that it was their fault or that they were being dumb, but that it was the healer's fault for not healing them when they do stand in bad.
In any case, the main problems the tanks and healers have are with bad dps. that's basically it. And when me and my girlfriend went dps, we actually wanted to improve the quality of some of the dps'ers out there who pug. But its a chore still and is mainly due to the random groups mentioned above. Now there are idiot tanks and idiot healers out there still. Far more idiot tanks than there are idiot healers though.
So what was i trying to say? Oh yea, LFD has been relatively good to me recently. but now i feel there's a dark cloud looming (cliche, i know).
On Call to Arms:
I have many thoughts regarding this new feature. I've mentioned my thoughts on what will happen through this system in another blog entry, but i wanted to think out loud for a bit right now regarding what i'll personally do with this feature. Although is it somewhat of a nice feature, i'll probably not use it when queueing for random heroics. Here are some of my reasons:
1. I have to queue by myself. Most of my play is with my girlfriend and half of the time i'd rather play with my guildies anyway. queueing up by myself robs my guildies of the benefits of being in a guild. they're there for the social, group aspect of the game. These have many benefits including grouping with people you know or like. In this situation, i will not be doing that. I cant if i want the goodie bag.
2. A feature like this will only encourage the hybrid spec'ed classes to switch from their usual dps or healing role and queue as a tank for the benefit (or detriment) of those they dont know. This, to me, is faulty reasoning. You're putting chocolate flavored bandaids on an infection. It's not the right treatment for the problem. Although we'll get shorter queues, there will be people who will queue as tanks and not be good at it. Although we can say they're just learning, maybe they will be better off learning in normal dungeons. at least there, there's a little more room for mistakes and overall noobery. In any case, there will be a huge influx (i may be exaggerating here) of dps'ers, who not only will have quick queue times but will now have even more incentive to queue as tanks, who will know almost nothing about tanking running into the instance, wiping the group several times, then leaves, only to really waste everybody's time. I am not saying there arent people who will learn to be good tanks. Maybe some will learn to be awesome tanks. But grouping with a good tank, or a decent tank learning more about their role is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. I do hate to drop group just because the tank sucks and no /kick attemp are successful, but hell, if the penalties for dps to drop group isnt already bad, this will just make it almost unbearable to the point where i might find a 30 minute deserter debuff PLUS a 30 minute queue after that very, very desirable.
3. The hybrid class also will exacerbate an already-existing proplem of ninja rolling on offspec gear. I've been to many dungeons where the paladin tank rolls on healing gear, the DK tank rolls on dps gear and the DPS warrior rolls on tanking gear. and this happens even when the guy with the main spec rolls need on an item. sometimes the person who actually needs the item wins it. Sometimes not. i'll get angrier if the ninja gets it, but its a bad experience whether the ninja gets it or not. Ninjas are still ninjas. Successfully ninja-ing something doesnt make it different. In any case, now we have people who's main specs are DPS, queueing as tanks, and rolling on DPS gear. Although this has happened many times to both me and my girlfriend before, i can predict that this will happen even more once Call to Arms get implimented.
I know. the new system gets a whole lot of QQ from me. and basically the entire blog entry today is one big qq session big enough to fill up a lake with all these tears. but....
I am trying to find good things to say about playing this game. And i end up with not much.
On Counting:
One thing i see across the internet is this silly little breakdown of groups:
In a 5man dungeon setting, 1 of the five players are tanks. that's 20%.
In a raid setting, 2.5 of the players are tanks. Whether its 10man or 25man, its usually the same. so 25% or 10%, your pick.
And then they conclude that there are only so many tanks, blah blah blah. and that's why the world is full of dps and short on tanks.
On those who count this way, please stop. There's NOTHING to keep these tanks, who tank in raids to dps in heroics for points. There's nothing to keep the DPS in raids to switch to a tanking spec and tank heroics. There's also NOTHING that will keep 100% of the raiders from jumping on their alts and playing whatever class, sometimes tanks, they like when they're not raiding. Please dont do these stupid calculations and say that the role population distribution of the whole MMO is based on the role population distribution of the raid.
On Common Sense:
And just because someone doesnt tank doesnt mean they cant. Although, many people who choose to DPS do so because they cant heal or tank, some dps may actually prefer damage dealing and some dps may actually do better as damage dealing, although their ability may span across several roles and classes. There are some excellent DPS out there who do well as tanks. There are some excellent DPS out there who are excellent tanks. There are some craptastic DPS out there who are excellent tanks. Perhaps the role they chose isnt really linked to ability. I am not trying to contradict my own blog post, but although there are people who may be encouraged to tank, and they probably are very good at it too, there will be those who will screw up the whole experience for them. Again, i just dont think blizz has it down right when deciding on this new Call to Arms thing. Sure, it will encourage those who havent tanked in a while to tank, but i do believe it will cause more problems than it's worth.
Er... i mean dungeon. LFD has been nice to me as of late. My groups have been wrought with much annoyances, mostly from guild groups. What i mean is this. I zone in with my gf to a random dungeon group and find three people of the same guild. of course, we're queueing as DPS b/c tanking and healing roles are ridiculously unrewarding (we feel like babysitters, really).
Now these guild groups will do one of two things. They either really suck, or they're really good with a chip on their shoulders. Both experiences suck hairy donkey balls. For the suckage teams, they usually either all quit when they cant do the first boss, or, continue to press on. After about five wipes or so, they declare that the two dps who arent in their guild must suck because we're not carrying them enough. In both cases everyone drops group. the first case better than the last because at least, we wouldnt have wasted our time after five+ wipes just to get to boss #2. I would have waited the three minutes to wait for a new random group of strangers if they were going to quit anyway.
The group of assholes who will check your gear, spec and credit report will continually chat while playing. they'll tell you that your gear sucks (why am i doing heroics anyway? to get gear, moron), or that our talent spec isnt optimal (for what? EJ's suggestion for raiding? dont be a tool, use your brains). These are the groups who have tanks that cannot keep their healers alive, ignore any kind of CC's and even some very obvious mob/boss mechanics. It also can include pets who aggro, mages who dont realize their sheeped mob has them on top of their aggro meter, boomkins who like to use typhoon for no fucking reason other than "its cool," and hunters who still dont know how misdirect works.
A little bit of background on why i like dps: It's less stress. It's fun, actually. and i do play this game for fun. The whole reason why it's fun is because there is less blame, basically, when anyone dies. there's less responsibilities. If i miss an interrupt, the healer needs to work harder. If i miss a decurse, the healer needs to work harder. If i stand in bad, the healer might have to work harder. And if i die because i stood in poop, well, it's my own damn fault. I know that. I do not have any responsibilities to anyone really. Even though i have CC duties, decurse duties, aggro responsibilities, etc, they are not as pressing as a tank's or healer's duties.
For the tank, he has to make sure all the mobs that are supposed to be tanked are on him and not on others, that there is a kill order and that nothing touches the healer (treat the healer like your wifey, basically). Variables such as bad CCer's, CC breakers, and randomtargetingHuntard or rainoffireonlyLock or noMindFreezeDK makes this difficult. The 5k dps, fully geared ilevel 246 dont know how to play their class or with a group damage dealer is a little bit of dead weight but can be worked around. but being stupid like the above may cause more stress than enjoyment.
For the healer, same as above. but it is as so much a problem if you dont mind letting a few of the dps die sometimes. however, the first comments from the dps isnt that it was their fault or that they were being dumb, but that it was the healer's fault for not healing them when they do stand in bad.
In any case, the main problems the tanks and healers have are with bad dps. that's basically it. And when me and my girlfriend went dps, we actually wanted to improve the quality of some of the dps'ers out there who pug. But its a chore still and is mainly due to the random groups mentioned above. Now there are idiot tanks and idiot healers out there still. Far more idiot tanks than there are idiot healers though.
So what was i trying to say? Oh yea, LFD has been relatively good to me recently. but now i feel there's a dark cloud looming (cliche, i know).
On Call to Arms:
I have many thoughts regarding this new feature. I've mentioned my thoughts on what will happen through this system in another blog entry, but i wanted to think out loud for a bit right now regarding what i'll personally do with this feature. Although is it somewhat of a nice feature, i'll probably not use it when queueing for random heroics. Here are some of my reasons:
1. I have to queue by myself. Most of my play is with my girlfriend and half of the time i'd rather play with my guildies anyway. queueing up by myself robs my guildies of the benefits of being in a guild. they're there for the social, group aspect of the game. These have many benefits including grouping with people you know or like. In this situation, i will not be doing that. I cant if i want the goodie bag.
2. A feature like this will only encourage the hybrid spec'ed classes to switch from their usual dps or healing role and queue as a tank for the benefit (or detriment) of those they dont know. This, to me, is faulty reasoning. You're putting chocolate flavored bandaids on an infection. It's not the right treatment for the problem. Although we'll get shorter queues, there will be people who will queue as tanks and not be good at it. Although we can say they're just learning, maybe they will be better off learning in normal dungeons. at least there, there's a little more room for mistakes and overall noobery. In any case, there will be a huge influx (i may be exaggerating here) of dps'ers, who not only will have quick queue times but will now have even more incentive to queue as tanks, who will know almost nothing about tanking running into the instance, wiping the group several times, then leaves, only to really waste everybody's time. I am not saying there arent people who will learn to be good tanks. Maybe some will learn to be awesome tanks. But grouping with a good tank, or a decent tank learning more about their role is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. I do hate to drop group just because the tank sucks and no /kick attemp are successful, but hell, if the penalties for dps to drop group isnt already bad, this will just make it almost unbearable to the point where i might find a 30 minute deserter debuff PLUS a 30 minute queue after that very, very desirable.
3. The hybrid class also will exacerbate an already-existing proplem of ninja rolling on offspec gear. I've been to many dungeons where the paladin tank rolls on healing gear, the DK tank rolls on dps gear and the DPS warrior rolls on tanking gear. and this happens even when the guy with the main spec rolls need on an item. sometimes the person who actually needs the item wins it. Sometimes not. i'll get angrier if the ninja gets it, but its a bad experience whether the ninja gets it or not. Ninjas are still ninjas. Successfully ninja-ing something doesnt make it different. In any case, now we have people who's main specs are DPS, queueing as tanks, and rolling on DPS gear. Although this has happened many times to both me and my girlfriend before, i can predict that this will happen even more once Call to Arms get implimented.
I know. the new system gets a whole lot of QQ from me. and basically the entire blog entry today is one big qq session big enough to fill up a lake with all these tears. but....
I am trying to find good things to say about playing this game. And i end up with not much.
On Counting:
One thing i see across the internet is this silly little breakdown of groups:
In a 5man dungeon setting, 1 of the five players are tanks. that's 20%.
In a raid setting, 2.5 of the players are tanks. Whether its 10man or 25man, its usually the same. so 25% or 10%, your pick.
And then they conclude that there are only so many tanks, blah blah blah. and that's why the world is full of dps and short on tanks.
On those who count this way, please stop. There's NOTHING to keep these tanks, who tank in raids to dps in heroics for points. There's nothing to keep the DPS in raids to switch to a tanking spec and tank heroics. There's also NOTHING that will keep 100% of the raiders from jumping on their alts and playing whatever class, sometimes tanks, they like when they're not raiding. Please dont do these stupid calculations and say that the role population distribution of the whole MMO is based on the role population distribution of the raid.
On Common Sense:
And just because someone doesnt tank doesnt mean they cant. Although, many people who choose to DPS do so because they cant heal or tank, some dps may actually prefer damage dealing and some dps may actually do better as damage dealing, although their ability may span across several roles and classes. There are some excellent DPS out there who do well as tanks. There are some excellent DPS out there who are excellent tanks. There are some craptastic DPS out there who are excellent tanks. Perhaps the role they chose isnt really linked to ability. I am not trying to contradict my own blog post, but although there are people who may be encouraged to tank, and they probably are very good at it too, there will be those who will screw up the whole experience for them. Again, i just dont think blizz has it down right when deciding on this new Call to Arms thing. Sure, it will encourage those who havent tanked in a while to tank, but i do believe it will cause more problems than it's worth.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Bread and Circuses
I heard news today of an upcoming change in 4.1 which made me thought a little. Bliz announced that they will give rewards to the least represented role in an LFD. This reward will probably be in the form of a goodie bag (remember those during your 20th time in SM:GY??) and will include mounts and non-combat pets as possible rewards. Possible, because it doesnt have to be. For sure these least represented classes will be given extra gold. The pets, maybe. the mounts, maybe. So it's good news right?
Well not really. Let me list my reasons why i dont think this will work out well.
1. Call to Arms will always be on. Call to arms is an announcement in the LFD tool that will tell everyone who wants to queue what role is in high demand. Lets not kid ourselves in the least bit and just state the obvious: Call to Arms will always be on. and Call to Arms will state that we have a shortage of tanks. It will never say we have a shortage of healers and, god forbid, damage dealers. And it will encourage those who do not tank to try to maybe tank for the rewards. This means that any tank, or any hybrid/tribrid class that wants to tank will be given the oppurtunity to get a mount or a pet.
2. What this will lead to is, not just more people tanking, but more baddies tanking. The LFD system is already rife with bad tanks, bad healers and bad dps (although sometimes bad healers can be countered with a good tank and bad dps is often carried by good dps) but of the three, the one that carries the most weight is the tank. If we get a bad tank, the group usually stalls after the first pull or two, gets frustrated, and often disbands. There will be some stubborn groups who will hold out until the tank decides he's had enough failure and leaves. It is quite often due to the misconception that we'll have to wait 30 more minutes for a new tank if we kick the current baddie. This is not the case, but often, people are quite reluctant to kick the tank no matter how bad he might be. In any case, we'll have shorter queues because many people will want to tank. But this may not necessarily lead to the same "quality" of dungeon groups we see today. But i guess, being somewhere doing an instance is better than being nowhere waiting for a queue to pop.
3. There is a possibility of gaining a rare pet or mount. This is bad? Hopefully, this will be as rare as getting an Azure drake from the Oculus random some time ago, which did encourage people to actually do the instance (and such an easy instance it was by then, i dont know how people didnt like it). But i am basically QQing about this one. I used to log on to my death knight every other day or so to run through Stratholme for the Baron's deathcharger. I did this for at least six months and one day i decided to stop. Then, on a random day i decided to run through that dungeon once more and BAM!! i got a horse! that's about nine months of farming. although i'd only run it about four days a week, but in those four days are quite possibly 20 runs. I picked up his runeblade three times! Now, when cataclysm hit and people were actually able to do Stratholme as a random dungeon i kinda felt i was cheated. Not only that, the drop rate was increased by a little bit. I felt cheated still. I bet this is the case for all those who gained "Light of The Dawn" or "Bane of the Fallen King" before Cata. They must have felt cheated that every other Joe is wearing their title now. Might as well bring back the PvP titles and the BC titles while we're at it (Hand of A'dal, anyone?). Now we'll have people with what? a blue protodrake? a white hawkstrider? a ravenlord? Midnight? how about that deathcharger huh? These are all the mounts i am currently farming. Deathcharger again? well i do have alts. =P and every other week or so i run with my guild to get the OS3D drake. at least with that one, everyone gets a fair /roll.
4. More tanks = More dungeons being run = more JPs gained by everyone in a shorter amount of time. What else will this mean? a flood of gems into the AH. For the non-jc'ers this might be a good thing since i can easily grab an inferno ruby from the AH at low low prices and have someone cut it for me for a small fee. But this will add to the already sinking JC market where yellow, green and orange gems are already hitting 10g and where Demonseyes are dirt cheap. The only contender still making us any gold? Inferno Rubies, which has dropped almost 50% in the last two weeks. Crazy influx of cheap Elementium FTL. Prices were down by almost 50% last week. So what does this mean for the gem market? people will begin to drop out. cut gems will be scarce again. Even the herbs and cloth and things will not be bought as much as we will buy gems with Justice points. What else would you do when you have all the heirloom gear you need and all the justice point gear you need? you buy gems to enchant your gear or sell for gold. right?
In any case, although Call to Arms may sound like an awesome change to the LFD tool, it will cause a lot of anger, stress and dissatisfaction with the game as we know it, hence the title, Bread and Circuses. Bliz is only trying to make things look good on the surface (shorten the queue times for DPS), essentially throwing bread at us and giving us entertainment. But we all know it will only make things worse. and look, we're already angry at ninjas, stressed at prissy tanks and dissatified with our non-sex lives as it is. lets not make it worse, yea? thanks bliz!
Well not really. Let me list my reasons why i dont think this will work out well.
1. Call to Arms will always be on. Call to arms is an announcement in the LFD tool that will tell everyone who wants to queue what role is in high demand. Lets not kid ourselves in the least bit and just state the obvious: Call to Arms will always be on. and Call to Arms will state that we have a shortage of tanks. It will never say we have a shortage of healers and, god forbid, damage dealers. And it will encourage those who do not tank to try to maybe tank for the rewards. This means that any tank, or any hybrid/tribrid class that wants to tank will be given the oppurtunity to get a mount or a pet.
2. What this will lead to is, not just more people tanking, but more baddies tanking. The LFD system is already rife with bad tanks, bad healers and bad dps (although sometimes bad healers can be countered with a good tank and bad dps is often carried by good dps) but of the three, the one that carries the most weight is the tank. If we get a bad tank, the group usually stalls after the first pull or two, gets frustrated, and often disbands. There will be some stubborn groups who will hold out until the tank decides he's had enough failure and leaves. It is quite often due to the misconception that we'll have to wait 30 more minutes for a new tank if we kick the current baddie. This is not the case, but often, people are quite reluctant to kick the tank no matter how bad he might be. In any case, we'll have shorter queues because many people will want to tank. But this may not necessarily lead to the same "quality" of dungeon groups we see today. But i guess, being somewhere doing an instance is better than being nowhere waiting for a queue to pop.
3. There is a possibility of gaining a rare pet or mount. This is bad? Hopefully, this will be as rare as getting an Azure drake from the Oculus random some time ago, which did encourage people to actually do the instance (and such an easy instance it was by then, i dont know how people didnt like it). But i am basically QQing about this one. I used to log on to my death knight every other day or so to run through Stratholme for the Baron's deathcharger. I did this for at least six months and one day i decided to stop. Then, on a random day i decided to run through that dungeon once more and BAM!! i got a horse! that's about nine months of farming. although i'd only run it about four days a week, but in those four days are quite possibly 20 runs. I picked up his runeblade three times! Now, when cataclysm hit and people were actually able to do Stratholme as a random dungeon i kinda felt i was cheated. Not only that, the drop rate was increased by a little bit. I felt cheated still. I bet this is the case for all those who gained "Light of The Dawn" or "Bane of the Fallen King" before Cata. They must have felt cheated that every other Joe is wearing their title now. Might as well bring back the PvP titles and the BC titles while we're at it (Hand of A'dal, anyone?). Now we'll have people with what? a blue protodrake? a white hawkstrider? a ravenlord? Midnight? how about that deathcharger huh? These are all the mounts i am currently farming. Deathcharger again? well i do have alts. =P and every other week or so i run with my guild to get the OS3D drake. at least with that one, everyone gets a fair /roll.
4. More tanks = More dungeons being run = more JPs gained by everyone in a shorter amount of time. What else will this mean? a flood of gems into the AH. For the non-jc'ers this might be a good thing since i can easily grab an inferno ruby from the AH at low low prices and have someone cut it for me for a small fee. But this will add to the already sinking JC market where yellow, green and orange gems are already hitting 10g and where Demonseyes are dirt cheap. The only contender still making us any gold? Inferno Rubies, which has dropped almost 50% in the last two weeks. Crazy influx of cheap Elementium FTL. Prices were down by almost 50% last week. So what does this mean for the gem market? people will begin to drop out. cut gems will be scarce again. Even the herbs and cloth and things will not be bought as much as we will buy gems with Justice points. What else would you do when you have all the heirloom gear you need and all the justice point gear you need? you buy gems to enchant your gear or sell for gold. right?
In any case, although Call to Arms may sound like an awesome change to the LFD tool, it will cause a lot of anger, stress and dissatisfaction with the game as we know it, hence the title, Bread and Circuses. Bliz is only trying to make things look good on the surface (shorten the queue times for DPS), essentially throwing bread at us and giving us entertainment. But we all know it will only make things worse. and look, we're already angry at ninjas, stressed at prissy tanks and dissatified with our non-sex lives as it is. lets not make it worse, yea? thanks bliz!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Another one gone.
There has been quite a few people packing up and leaving WoW or blogging lately. One of whom i enjoy reading often, Redhawks, has somehow hit it big (GRATS MAN!!!!). I'll be ordering my first CD via Amazon when his album lands. He's a rapper, aparently. I do enjoy meself some good rap. I just hope he doesnt kill any more classics while doing so!
But you know. this is April 1st..... =P
But you know. this is April 1st..... =P
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