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.