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!
Showing posts with label tanking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tanking. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2011
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!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Rock
Last night i was tanking a bit and found myself looking for level 70 gear to tank with, as if i didnt already have the entire cobalt tanking set already. why not have a choice? maybe i do like a few more options to itemize my stats (yea i realize that BC plate gear is itemized for the pala and warrior tank and is not that much useful for the death knight that was introduced in Wrath). things like shield block and block rating ignored, there are some nice pieces for tanking. i am especially looking for anything to compliment my cobalt set which includes a cape, rings, trinkets and a neck piece. i dont understand why DK's do not get their actual tanking runeforge until level 72. it was a bit of torture tanking Utgarde keep and Nexus between level 70 and level 71. Even with the runeforge (Stoneskin gargoyle or Nerubian Carapace) tanking wasnt fun as i would get hit for a lot of damage often.
Anyway, so i queued for various dungeons, including Shattered Halls, The Botanica, The Black Morass, The Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth. I think i skipped over Steamvaults because it didnt have anything exciting for me.
In ay case, of those five instances, i was given The Arcatraz. things started off pretty easy at first. I'd deathgrip the first group on the left, then the group on the right. then i took the middle group along with the mutation. Easy enough. Then we got the big mutation thing and we took care of that easily. I dont understand how previous runs resulted in wipes at this point. but in previous runs, i was not the tank, or the healer. I was merely dpsing. this was several months ago on my paladin. in any case, we cleared pretty much everything without incident until the last room, where the healer decided to go afk. then we wiped and healer left. an insignificant dps left as well. This left us with top dps shadow priest and second top dps mage. The priest decided to switch to healing so we moved on to take out the trash mobs. In the last room, there are several difficult mob encounters, but they can be pulled separately. firstly, there's two groups of two satyrs immediately inside the room, with a patrolling infernal. you can aggro the inferal without aggroing the two groups of satyrs. and that's exactly what i did. the inferno is probably the funnest fight due to it casting meteor strike. simple watch the ground around you to monitor if you're being targeted for meteor strike. if you see red fire ripples around you, move. thats it. it gets tough when tanking because i really dont know who is being targetted.
The drill is simple. tank until he casts meteor. move to position 2. he casts meteor again, move back to position 1. the problem occurs when there's four people and two of them have pets. or in our case, one mage caster with a pet. sometimes they get targetted. what we did was set the mage's pet to stand at a certain spot. if he tanks the hit, then great! if the mage gets targetted, he moves to the priest. if the priest gets targetted, he moves to the mage. if the tank gets targetted, he moves somewhere. after dying several times to this (since there are two infernals in that room) we finally downed them. having just the tank and the healer made it easy (albiet long) to complete since meteor can only hit one of two people. plus, with PWS up, we both can withstand a meteor hit. however, it will usually leave us with about 10% health so a quick heal is needed after the meteor strike. i continued to use vampiric blood whenever i can (1 minute cd) and IBF in between (really not sure if meteor strike is physical or magic damage or both).
In any case, with that fun part out of the way.... we went in and one-shot the boss. many would remember this fight as being a fight with three semi-bosses and then one boss that sometimes mind controls and will make copies of himself (twice) during the fight. each copy needs to be killed. overall, it took several minutes with one mage dpsing. but we did, in the end, kill Skyriss. simple encounter.
So no real post with content today. im just telling a story of victory over nerfed content!
Anyway, so i queued for various dungeons, including Shattered Halls, The Botanica, The Black Morass, The Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth. I think i skipped over Steamvaults because it didnt have anything exciting for me.
In ay case, of those five instances, i was given The Arcatraz. things started off pretty easy at first. I'd deathgrip the first group on the left, then the group on the right. then i took the middle group along with the mutation. Easy enough. Then we got the big mutation thing and we took care of that easily. I dont understand how previous runs resulted in wipes at this point. but in previous runs, i was not the tank, or the healer. I was merely dpsing. this was several months ago on my paladin. in any case, we cleared pretty much everything without incident until the last room, where the healer decided to go afk. then we wiped and healer left. an insignificant dps left as well. This left us with top dps shadow priest and second top dps mage. The priest decided to switch to healing so we moved on to take out the trash mobs. In the last room, there are several difficult mob encounters, but they can be pulled separately. firstly, there's two groups of two satyrs immediately inside the room, with a patrolling infernal. you can aggro the inferal without aggroing the two groups of satyrs. and that's exactly what i did. the inferno is probably the funnest fight due to it casting meteor strike. simple watch the ground around you to monitor if you're being targeted for meteor strike. if you see red fire ripples around you, move. thats it. it gets tough when tanking because i really dont know who is being targetted.
The drill is simple. tank until he casts meteor. move to position 2. he casts meteor again, move back to position 1. the problem occurs when there's four people and two of them have pets. or in our case, one mage caster with a pet. sometimes they get targetted. what we did was set the mage's pet to stand at a certain spot. if he tanks the hit, then great! if the mage gets targetted, he moves to the priest. if the priest gets targetted, he moves to the mage. if the tank gets targetted, he moves somewhere. after dying several times to this (since there are two infernals in that room) we finally downed them. having just the tank and the healer made it easy (albiet long) to complete since meteor can only hit one of two people. plus, with PWS up, we both can withstand a meteor hit. however, it will usually leave us with about 10% health so a quick heal is needed after the meteor strike. i continued to use vampiric blood whenever i can (1 minute cd) and IBF in between (really not sure if meteor strike is physical or magic damage or both).
In any case, with that fun part out of the way.... we went in and one-shot the boss. many would remember this fight as being a fight with three semi-bosses and then one boss that sometimes mind controls and will make copies of himself (twice) during the fight. each copy needs to be killed. overall, it took several minutes with one mage dpsing. but we did, in the end, kill Skyriss. simple encounter.
So no real post with content today. im just telling a story of victory over nerfed content!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Compliments
Just to think, i thought my tanking kinda sucks cos of all the stupid things that keep the tank sapped, disarmed, or feared. and then i get this...
I was actually complimenting the healer as he never let me drop below 50% health. okay maybe once but that was due to a bad patrol running around.
keep on tanking? hell yea!
now all i gotta do is figure out why dks have bad rep.... ha!
I was actually complimenting the healer as he never let me drop below 50% health. okay maybe once but that was due to a bad patrol running around.
keep on tanking? hell yea!
now all i gotta do is figure out why dks have bad rep.... ha!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
DK Blood Tanking Lv 60
Death Knight Tanking So Far
So my girl and i decided to make death knights! i already have several death knights. Unholy Tank, Frost DPS, and some others i got bored with. What i find most interesting is the whole experience of tanking at level 60, and then turning around and healing other DK tanks at the same level. Here is my experience so far.
Death Knight's POV
Here i am standing at the entrance of Ramparts, level 60, with brand new spells like Death and Decay. I dont have all the talents i need yet to be effective (and when i say effective, i mean super good that everyone praises me and stays in hopes that i queue up again). But i do have enough points to do what i need to do.
Preface: There are talents in every tree for tanking, and in the first tier. these talents should be used by all tanks at level 60, even if it keeps us from the juicy Howling Blast talent. These talents are easy to get, as they're in the first tier of each tree. Blood tree, get Blade Barrier. Frost tree, get Toughness. Unholy tree, get Anticipation. These talents are there for every Dk to easily get so they can tank effectively in any spec they choose.
I am spec'd in blood so i have some of the juicy self-healing spells that totally rock. i also have the DK's version of the warrior's last stand. I am sooooo hoping for icebound fortitude soon (warrior version is shield wall), which will reduce the damage taken by about 40%. since i dont have defense rating, i'll need to glyp it, but i already have my two glyph slots filled (dilemas!!!) with Death Strike and Vampiric Blood. I should probably get rid of the DS glyph. its more damage anyway. I was thinking of replacing it with Rune Strike, but +10% crit "can" help, but not really if my main concern is just to hold aggro and stay up.
My blood tree is filled with talents that improve my survival, increases my runic regeneration, and gives me nifty tools to regain lost health. it does not include any extra crit, but i do have the 2-hand weapon talent. more damage is, actually, more threat. but im more concerned about survival.
I've also gone ahead and put 5 points in the frost tree in Toughness and 5 points in Unholy tree in Anticipation. These are the bread and butter of tanking, but it does require 10 points spent elsewhere, and early on. optimally, we'd want to spend those 10 points after we fill up 51 points in our main tree. but for tanking, im at 40/5/5 instead of 50/0/0. Since i only have 40 points in Blood, one juicy tanking talent (the one that reduces damage if im lower than 35% health, i forgot the name) is missing. Imagine being a Frost tank, and not having howling blast (a staple) until level 70 because we have to spend 5 points in blood and 5 points in unholy first. that sucks for frost tanks (unless they skip Blade Barrier and Anticipation to fill them up between 60-70).
I am now building up my unholy tree and hopes to get a shorter cooldown/CD on Death and Decay and longer disease durations. As of right now with zero points in Morbidity, i find that if DPS are decent, we will kill a group about 10 secnods before my DnD is refreshed. What i'd like, is for the DnD to be available immediately after killing one group, so that i can use it on the next, or that i can use it again should there be adds.
What i also find is that tanking is not as smooth as dps. every pull requires Death and Decay. why? because of Disarms. that's correct. for those who have never tanked Ramps, it is an annoyance for many tanks due to the mob's disarm effect. they will "disarm" me for several seconds. in which time, i am unable to attack much (but i do punch!) so having DnD down to maintain aggro is a great tool. I cant imagine tanking without some AoE tool that will allow me to hold aggro until i get my sword back. and once i do get my sword back, i get disarmed again after a hit. its quite annoying, but im still doing my job. oh how i miss DPS. i never get disarmed and my rotations are always as smooth as silk.
Positioning: In terms of positioning, Ramps is quite a challenge. Every group is spread apart OK, with very little wiggle room to move around. Not only that, there are patrols roaming around. If those patrols arent dispatched properly, they can aggro during a fight (and not only the patrols, but also the group standing close enough to the patrols, so then you'll be dealing with two GROUPS of adds, instead of just one). what i try to do is face the mobs to the side so my back is usually against the wall. this offers lots of camera angling and zooming just to be able to see around me, but it keeps me and the DPS from "butt" pulling the next group. To butt pull, simply walk backwards into a group. They will notice your butt and spank it.
This "buttpull" happens a lot with new tanks, actually. They seem to not realize that when they charge into a group of mobs, the melee dps needs to stand BEHIND the mobs they're tanking. in so doing, there is a possibility that the DPS will aggro a new group. This is stupid play and all tanks should learn to move the group of mobs to a safer spot in order for the dps to actually stand behind the mobs. now if you have only ranged dps, where the tank faces sometimes does not matter. The tank still needs to be able to face the group to see if there are mobs running to chew on the healer or ranged dps. but i find this practice uncommon in the many instances i've been in lately.
Although it seems like i can handle two groups of mobs at a time, i usually try to keep it to one group only. the reason for this is that i do not have all my cooldowns yet, my rune usage is wonky, i dont have rune strike until level 66 and i do feel a bit squishy. When am i not squishy? when i never dip below 35% health (this is when Mik's Scrolling Combat Test chimes me that im low in health). But when the healer constantly has to work to keep me up, i know that im taking a lot of damage. Whats strange is that i've healed many dk tanks similar to me and it felt just fine. my mana usage was decent, my heals were flowing nicely, and i rarely had to use Nature's Swiftness emergency spell. But when it comes down to me tanking, i have this irrational idea that if i dip too low in health, i shouldnt tank (maybe this is due to countless heroics where i've tanked, and kept many tanks up where we're never below 50% health unless somoeone screwed up bad).
Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts on level 60 tanking. it sucks. i dont know how people do it.
So my girl and i decided to make death knights! i already have several death knights. Unholy Tank, Frost DPS, and some others i got bored with. What i find most interesting is the whole experience of tanking at level 60, and then turning around and healing other DK tanks at the same level. Here is my experience so far.
Death Knight's POV
Here i am standing at the entrance of Ramparts, level 60, with brand new spells like Death and Decay. I dont have all the talents i need yet to be effective (and when i say effective, i mean super good that everyone praises me and stays in hopes that i queue up again). But i do have enough points to do what i need to do.
Preface: There are talents in every tree for tanking, and in the first tier. these talents should be used by all tanks at level 60, even if it keeps us from the juicy Howling Blast talent. These talents are easy to get, as they're in the first tier of each tree. Blood tree, get Blade Barrier. Frost tree, get Toughness. Unholy tree, get Anticipation. These talents are there for every Dk to easily get so they can tank effectively in any spec they choose.
I am spec'd in blood so i have some of the juicy self-healing spells that totally rock. i also have the DK's version of the warrior's last stand. I am sooooo hoping for icebound fortitude soon (warrior version is shield wall), which will reduce the damage taken by about 40%. since i dont have defense rating, i'll need to glyp it, but i already have my two glyph slots filled (dilemas!!!) with Death Strike and Vampiric Blood. I should probably get rid of the DS glyph. its more damage anyway. I was thinking of replacing it with Rune Strike, but +10% crit "can" help, but not really if my main concern is just to hold aggro and stay up.
My blood tree is filled with talents that improve my survival, increases my runic regeneration, and gives me nifty tools to regain lost health. it does not include any extra crit, but i do have the 2-hand weapon talent. more damage is, actually, more threat. but im more concerned about survival.
I've also gone ahead and put 5 points in the frost tree in Toughness and 5 points in Unholy tree in Anticipation. These are the bread and butter of tanking, but it does require 10 points spent elsewhere, and early on. optimally, we'd want to spend those 10 points after we fill up 51 points in our main tree. but for tanking, im at 40/5/5 instead of 50/0/0. Since i only have 40 points in Blood, one juicy tanking talent (the one that reduces damage if im lower than 35% health, i forgot the name) is missing. Imagine being a Frost tank, and not having howling blast (a staple) until level 70 because we have to spend 5 points in blood and 5 points in unholy first. that sucks for frost tanks (unless they skip Blade Barrier and Anticipation to fill them up between 60-70).
I am now building up my unholy tree and hopes to get a shorter cooldown/CD on Death and Decay and longer disease durations. As of right now with zero points in Morbidity, i find that if DPS are decent, we will kill a group about 10 secnods before my DnD is refreshed. What i'd like, is for the DnD to be available immediately after killing one group, so that i can use it on the next, or that i can use it again should there be adds.
What i also find is that tanking is not as smooth as dps. every pull requires Death and Decay. why? because of Disarms. that's correct. for those who have never tanked Ramps, it is an annoyance for many tanks due to the mob's disarm effect. they will "disarm" me for several seconds. in which time, i am unable to attack much (but i do punch!) so having DnD down to maintain aggro is a great tool. I cant imagine tanking without some AoE tool that will allow me to hold aggro until i get my sword back. and once i do get my sword back, i get disarmed again after a hit. its quite annoying, but im still doing my job. oh how i miss DPS. i never get disarmed and my rotations are always as smooth as silk.
Positioning: In terms of positioning, Ramps is quite a challenge. Every group is spread apart OK, with very little wiggle room to move around. Not only that, there are patrols roaming around. If those patrols arent dispatched properly, they can aggro during a fight (and not only the patrols, but also the group standing close enough to the patrols, so then you'll be dealing with two GROUPS of adds, instead of just one). what i try to do is face the mobs to the side so my back is usually against the wall. this offers lots of camera angling and zooming just to be able to see around me, but it keeps me and the DPS from "butt" pulling the next group. To butt pull, simply walk backwards into a group. They will notice your butt and spank it.
This "buttpull" happens a lot with new tanks, actually. They seem to not realize that when they charge into a group of mobs, the melee dps needs to stand BEHIND the mobs they're tanking. in so doing, there is a possibility that the DPS will aggro a new group. This is stupid play and all tanks should learn to move the group of mobs to a safer spot in order for the dps to actually stand behind the mobs. now if you have only ranged dps, where the tank faces sometimes does not matter. The tank still needs to be able to face the group to see if there are mobs running to chew on the healer or ranged dps. but i find this practice uncommon in the many instances i've been in lately.
Although it seems like i can handle two groups of mobs at a time, i usually try to keep it to one group only. the reason for this is that i do not have all my cooldowns yet, my rune usage is wonky, i dont have rune strike until level 66 and i do feel a bit squishy. When am i not squishy? when i never dip below 35% health (this is when Mik's Scrolling Combat Test chimes me that im low in health). But when the healer constantly has to work to keep me up, i know that im taking a lot of damage. Whats strange is that i've healed many dk tanks similar to me and it felt just fine. my mana usage was decent, my heals were flowing nicely, and i rarely had to use Nature's Swiftness emergency spell. But when it comes down to me tanking, i have this irrational idea that if i dip too low in health, i shouldnt tank (maybe this is due to countless heroics where i've tanked, and kept many tanks up where we're never below 50% health unless somoeone screwed up bad).
Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts on level 60 tanking. it sucks. i dont know how people do it.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Death Knight DPS Spec vs. Tanking Spec
Here's why i am writing this post:
GF: Hey which DK spec is for tanking?
Me: All of them.
GF: ??? What about DPS?
Me: All of them.
GF: What?
Me: It depends on the talents within each spec.
So here's a picture i stole somewhere on the internet. it shows the basic Unholy DK DPS build that many people have agreed as good. Well, i took it a bit futher and put yellow boxes around the talents an Unholy DK would pick if he were to tank as Unholy. Then i crossed out some of the talents that's blatantly for dps (as in, no respectable tank would ever pick these talents. although there's some talents in the blood tree that needs to be "wasted" to get to improved runetap).
GF: Hey which DK spec is for tanking?
Me: All of them.
GF: ??? What about DPS?
Me: All of them.
GF: What?
Me: It depends on the talents within each spec.
So here's a picture i stole somewhere on the internet. it shows the basic Unholy DK DPS build that many people have agreed as good. Well, i took it a bit futher and put yellow boxes around the talents an Unholy DK would pick if he were to tank as Unholy. Then i crossed out some of the talents that's blatantly for dps (as in, no respectable tank would ever pick these talents. although there's some talents in the blood tree that needs to be "wasted" to get to improved runetap).
Click Pic to Enlarge
Note that this is the level 80, single target (ie. bosses) talent spec. leveling spec would be a little different but very much the same. also the only different between this spec and an AoE spec is the switching of two talents. otherwise, everything's the same. note that for tanking, you'll need talents from every tree. note also that some of your fun dps talents are crossed out. this is because no tank needs a ghoul, and no tank needs a gargoyle. those are strictly for dps. since this is an unholy spec, you're also giving up some nice dps talents from the blood tree as well. you still want 2hand swords, but you're going to give up some in bladed armor to jump to blood tap and improved blood tap.
I can do this for the Blood tree and the frost tree as well, but since my GF is Unholy, i fugred this is the best way to explain so she'll have some idea what im talking about. unholy dps is really good with the AoE dps. I also find that Frost dps is great as well. Blood dps is solid, but rather boring. tanking, however, is a totally different game and requires a familiarity with your buttons and surroundings that requires a good proficiency in one of the three specs. what i mean to say is, get good with one spec before you plan on tanking in that spec.
So to debunk some common misconceptions (pre-cata, ofc)...
1. All specs can tank.
2. The difference between dps and tank are the talent choices within their relative tree.
3. Frost is not THE tanking spec.
4. Unholy DPS is the highest dps spec, for you. this means that if you spec into all three specs, assuming skill level is the same, you'll do more dps as unholy. This does not mean that i wont come by in my frost dps spec (and since my skill > your skill) and decimate your dps. again, assuming the same skill level, unholy will do more dps.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tanking and Gemming for the Asshats
This is a little related to the previous post, which is why i titled the post that way. but... it is not entirely. What i do like to talk about is the issue of tanks. No, not asshat tanks, but asshat healers or dps who look at a tank's health and decide that they have a crap tank. what i mean is this...
I zone into an instance and see four other players, one of which is the tank. now the very first thing i look at is who's the tank, and so i can set my focus on him. i rarely look at his HP if im dps, but i will glance at it if i was healing him. His health will give me a guage of exactly how much attention i have to give to him while healing the instance. that's basically it. i dont check his gear to see if he's crit immune, or check to see if he's even got the right types of gear on. i just take it by faith that the tank knows what he's doing, no matter the level of HP he may have.
Why do i say this is because i oftentimes find people commenting on the tank's health as the determining factor as to how well an instance will go, or if there are hiccups, who the first person to blame would be if we were to have to point fingers. of course, in a bad pull, the tank will usually die first, or if the tank has abilities on cooldown, the dps and healer may die before the tank has the opportunity to grab aggro. this happened to me the other night where adds aggroed and went straight for the AoE-ing dps and i couldnt do anything to stop them for maybe 4-5 seconds.
New tank
When people do see a tank with say, 25k health, a few things go through their minds, im sure. and one of these things is that the tank is "new". new to what? well, for a lot of people, they may assume the tank is "new" to tanking itself. a person new to tanking may be a liability for the group, as the dps and healer may feel like guinea pigs at this point. but the fact of the matter is everyone's learning, we just dont want them to learn while pugging with us, ESPECIALLY if they're tanks. correct? i mean we can deal with bad dps, or bad healing (even bad healing has its limits), but bad tanking is a no no. a new tanks, 25k health tanks all somehow equate to possibly bad tanks.
New 80
There are many who have been in the game for a while leveling their alt tank and barely reached 80. there are also others who have joined the game several months earlier and have finally made it to 80, ready to tank heroics. i've encountered many people who do 2k dps, heal wonderfully and tank like leetsauce who have just dinged 80 that day, the day before, or somethind during the same week. last week i had the experience of seeing one party member say, i just dinged 80 today, with three more people saying how they're new to 80 as well. i was the only one who couldnt say that. instead, i said i dinged 80 a year ago.
it was kind of refreshing to see fresh new 80s running heroics and not judging each other. what's funny, or sad, is that it's usually always the raiders who seem to compare and belittle everyone else. now i am not saying every raider does it. what i am saying is that when it does happen, its more likely than not, a raiding individual pugging his daily random heroic for his frosties.
So these tanks with 25k-ish health who just dinged 80 are often criticized for their low health, but my contention is why? that's usually what tanks had the day they started heroics when wrath came out. and that's a somewhat middle-ground. i started tanking at 23k health. and before ulduar hit, i had maybe 28k health at most. i struggled to even get close to 30k health. but now we see tanks with 40k health and think that everyone, upon reaching 80, should have those numbers. its almost infuriating to see people who really do not have any idea how overboard that number is. i mean think of it this way, if a new 80 tank were to tank normal utgarde keep or nexus, that's basically what a 40k health tank is like doing heroics.
The Fallacy of HP
I just came across a post this morning about effective health found here. Think Tank on Armor. He thinks about armor pretty much the same way i think about avoidance. it basically increases your effective health. now he has a pretty detailed example of how it relates to healing, and i cannot agree with him more about that. although in heroics, the amount of overpowered healing can bsically negate his claims, in raids, it is quite different. armor is king. avoidance is queen. and HP is the jester.... according to me.
Before we go on, i'd like to tell you my stand on HP. its subpar. it really is. anyone telling you to stack stamina as long as you have the minimum defense rating has no idea what he's talking about. it does make sense on its own tho. if you take everything else out of the equation, of course, the more stamina you have, the more damage you can take. but we live in a very multi-faceted world (of warcraft) and therefore, we have to take many other factors into consideration.
Note: the following examples will not include hard numbers but will describe the basic concept of the stats i will be talking about. if you want exact numbers please go to sites like elitist jerks or tankspot.
Mitigation: What Armor Does. the person who prioritizes armor when gearing will see a lot less damage per hit. overall, he might have more damage if he doesnt have enough avoidance. assuming that he's being healed sufficiently, his armor is negating a fair amount of the hits. the more armor he has, the less damage he takes per hit.
Example. Lets suppose a mob does an auto attack for 10k health. Lets suppose he only does auto attacks.
If the person taking the hits has zero armor on, each attack will damage him by 10k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 4th hit.
Lets say the person puts on armor (all other things being equal, including health, i know, not realistic, but this is to prove a point) so that he will negate 50% of the damage made to him.
If the person has armor to negate 50% damage, each attack will damage him by 5k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 8th hit.
Now consider that each hit from the mob takes 1 second. if he had zero armor, he would die in 4 seconds. if he had 50% damage mitigation from armor, he will die after 8 seconds. (i just made a quick example of TTL, or time to live).
Armor increases TTL, reduces damage taken per hit and makes life for the healers a whole lot easier.
See how armor works there? HP isnt really the "end all" of all tanking stats. by all means no. lets move on to the next item.
Avoidance: Total Avoidance is the sum of several stats, including Dodge, Parry, and Block. These stats are the basis of helping a tank NOT take damage. What i mean is a dodged attach will hit for zero damage. a parried attack will hit for zero damage. block is a different animal and has its own damage reduction amounts and things. but we know for sure one thing, dodge and parry negates 100% of any hit.
So lets take block out of the equation to make things simpler and pretend we're talking about DK tanks or bear tanks.
Lets take the tank from the Armor example and say he has 40k health, with 50% damage mitigation from armor. that is what we'll work with.
Lets say it's a DK with a dodge percentage of 24% and a parry percentage of 21%. This gives the DK a total of 45% avoidance.
This means that 45% of the mobs attack will not hit the dk at all. With some math here, we can estimate that per swing, the mob will get about 2750 damage. since each swing is 1 second apart, the tank will essentially take 2750 damage per second. with a tank of 40k health, it will take the mob 14.55 seconds to kill the tank.
Now 14.55 seconds is better than 8 seconds (armor only) and a whole lot better than 4 seconds (no mitigation).
Note/Edit: Please note that avoidance is on "chance per swing" and not an actual percentage of damage reduction. because of this, if you get unlucky and get hit on all swings, your TTL will actually be 8 seconds. If you're lucky and are missed on all swings, your TTL will be indefinite, or forever. Because of this reasoning, a more statistical analysis will have to be done, as in, if each hit from a boss has a 45% chance to miss (55% chance to land), what's the probability that the tank will survive for 15 seconds? i believe this will result in some z-score and bell curve with deviations and such. but if all swings were to be distributed evenly, i would give the tank about 15 seconds to live. again, more complex (and more accurate) calculations can be fould elsewhere. i am merely giving an overview, showing the basic concept.
To Sum Things Up
I know this has been a long post but i really wanted to go through just what exactly soaks up damage. i know that on a 1 to 1 ratio, health points can be seen and understood universally among everyone. if a mob hits a tank for 3k damage, that's 3k health gone. but what they do not see is that the mob usually hits everyone else for 8k damage and that the tank is often parrying or dodging attacks more than half of the time. they dont see that. dps usually does not see that. it is really only the tank and healers who really see this mechanic at work. why else would a boss 1hit a warlock to death? but dps doesnt see that and calls himself a squishy. sure, he's truly a squishy, but he doesnt exactly know why or how or what it all really means.
AND in order to help ease the minds of these misguided dps, the tanks do not take the time to explain all of this to the dps. instead, they appease the dps by gemming for stamina, enchanting for stamina, use health/stamina enhancing armorkits and drink elixirs of mighty fortitude. The tanks end up trying to make the dps and healers feel a little more at ease by enhancing the only number the dps and healers can actually see but because of this, they leave little room, if any, for other stats like armor and avoidance.
True, as people gear up, they will encounter gear with higher amounts of stamina and armor. so why bother when you already have 560 defense rating and a billion armor points? shouldnt they be entitled to spread out their stats with more stamina/health? well with better armor comes more stamina anyway, so the inverse can also be argued. why not gem defense when you now have more stamina? see what i did there?
But instead, i see bear tanks gemming for stamina. I see dk's gemming for stamina. i see paladins and warriors gemming for stamina. and as a healer, i always have to cringe at these tanks. i hate, as much as i complain about boring heroic runs, i hate healing 50k health tanks who stack stamina. i constantly have to heal them. there is really no break for me at all in heroics when healing these guys. this takes a toll on the healer (so the dps, although they feel really comfortable running along with a 50k health tank, they dont realize that there is less time and mana for me to heal them should they need any kind of healing) and when we get into harder fights where there's collateral damage, aoe damage, or just random damage, i find little time to heal the dps or myself.
ATTENTION ALL TANKS: THERE ARE BETTER STATS THAN STAMINA!!!
For bears:
Gem for Agility. Agility (Agi) will increase your armor. with the bear shapeshift multiplier to armor, you get even more armor per point of agi than the other plate wearing classes would.
Agi also increases your dodge percentage. this is your only aviodance stat, so beef (or bear) it up as much as you can with agi. Its really easy for bears. we only need one stat to deal with.
For plate wearers:
Gem for Defense even past the crit immune level (currently at 535 for heroics and 540 for raids). The more Defense (Def) you have, the more you're able to dodge and parry at the very least. not only will you increase your chance to avoid a hit, you're also giving yourself a Def buffer should you get a better piece of gear with less Def but having more Armor/Stam/Dodge/Parry/etc.
You cannot gem for Armor, but you can enchant and use armor kits for more armor. However, i would try to go for the best piece of gear with the highest built-in armor, gem for defense, enchant it with stats, armsman, or threat.
For both bears and plate wearers: There are plenty of resources online. I know things can be confusing and information can be scattered over the internet. but the information is out there. If you have any questions or need directions on where to go for your class, please feel free to reply and i will try my best to point you in the right direction.
Also, there is the argument about magical damage ignoring all armor and even avoidance. In this case, if armor and avoidance are negated, then a thinking person would indeed switch out his gear and use some magic resistance gear or stamina gear. Now if the fight was a mix of mostly physical hits with some magic damage, then the thinking person will have to evaluate which he prefers to mitigate and which would be more important to mitigate on the whole of the fight. you can always change gear after the fight to suit the needs of the next fight.
Again, to all tanks, there are better stats that just stamina. to all dps and maybe healers, there are much better ways to guage and judge a tank than by his health pool.
I zone into an instance and see four other players, one of which is the tank. now the very first thing i look at is who's the tank, and so i can set my focus on him. i rarely look at his HP if im dps, but i will glance at it if i was healing him. His health will give me a guage of exactly how much attention i have to give to him while healing the instance. that's basically it. i dont check his gear to see if he's crit immune, or check to see if he's even got the right types of gear on. i just take it by faith that the tank knows what he's doing, no matter the level of HP he may have.
Why do i say this is because i oftentimes find people commenting on the tank's health as the determining factor as to how well an instance will go, or if there are hiccups, who the first person to blame would be if we were to have to point fingers. of course, in a bad pull, the tank will usually die first, or if the tank has abilities on cooldown, the dps and healer may die before the tank has the opportunity to grab aggro. this happened to me the other night where adds aggroed and went straight for the AoE-ing dps and i couldnt do anything to stop them for maybe 4-5 seconds.
New tank
When people do see a tank with say, 25k health, a few things go through their minds, im sure. and one of these things is that the tank is "new". new to what? well, for a lot of people, they may assume the tank is "new" to tanking itself. a person new to tanking may be a liability for the group, as the dps and healer may feel like guinea pigs at this point. but the fact of the matter is everyone's learning, we just dont want them to learn while pugging with us, ESPECIALLY if they're tanks. correct? i mean we can deal with bad dps, or bad healing (even bad healing has its limits), but bad tanking is a no no. a new tanks, 25k health tanks all somehow equate to possibly bad tanks.
New 80
There are many who have been in the game for a while leveling their alt tank and barely reached 80. there are also others who have joined the game several months earlier and have finally made it to 80, ready to tank heroics. i've encountered many people who do 2k dps, heal wonderfully and tank like leetsauce who have just dinged 80 that day, the day before, or somethind during the same week. last week i had the experience of seeing one party member say, i just dinged 80 today, with three more people saying how they're new to 80 as well. i was the only one who couldnt say that. instead, i said i dinged 80 a year ago.
it was kind of refreshing to see fresh new 80s running heroics and not judging each other. what's funny, or sad, is that it's usually always the raiders who seem to compare and belittle everyone else. now i am not saying every raider does it. what i am saying is that when it does happen, its more likely than not, a raiding individual pugging his daily random heroic for his frosties.
So these tanks with 25k-ish health who just dinged 80 are often criticized for their low health, but my contention is why? that's usually what tanks had the day they started heroics when wrath came out. and that's a somewhat middle-ground. i started tanking at 23k health. and before ulduar hit, i had maybe 28k health at most. i struggled to even get close to 30k health. but now we see tanks with 40k health and think that everyone, upon reaching 80, should have those numbers. its almost infuriating to see people who really do not have any idea how overboard that number is. i mean think of it this way, if a new 80 tank were to tank normal utgarde keep or nexus, that's basically what a 40k health tank is like doing heroics.
The Fallacy of HP
I just came across a post this morning about effective health found here. Think Tank on Armor. He thinks about armor pretty much the same way i think about avoidance. it basically increases your effective health. now he has a pretty detailed example of how it relates to healing, and i cannot agree with him more about that. although in heroics, the amount of overpowered healing can bsically negate his claims, in raids, it is quite different. armor is king. avoidance is queen. and HP is the jester.... according to me.
Before we go on, i'd like to tell you my stand on HP. its subpar. it really is. anyone telling you to stack stamina as long as you have the minimum defense rating has no idea what he's talking about. it does make sense on its own tho. if you take everything else out of the equation, of course, the more stamina you have, the more damage you can take. but we live in a very multi-faceted world (of warcraft) and therefore, we have to take many other factors into consideration.
Note: the following examples will not include hard numbers but will describe the basic concept of the stats i will be talking about. if you want exact numbers please go to sites like elitist jerks or tankspot.
Mitigation: What Armor Does. the person who prioritizes armor when gearing will see a lot less damage per hit. overall, he might have more damage if he doesnt have enough avoidance. assuming that he's being healed sufficiently, his armor is negating a fair amount of the hits. the more armor he has, the less damage he takes per hit.
Example. Lets suppose a mob does an auto attack for 10k health. Lets suppose he only does auto attacks.
If the person taking the hits has zero armor on, each attack will damage him by 10k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 4th hit.
Lets say the person puts on armor (all other things being equal, including health, i know, not realistic, but this is to prove a point) so that he will negate 50% of the damage made to him.
If the person has armor to negate 50% damage, each attack will damage him by 5k hp. If he has 40k health, he will die after the 8th hit.
Now consider that each hit from the mob takes 1 second. if he had zero armor, he would die in 4 seconds. if he had 50% damage mitigation from armor, he will die after 8 seconds. (i just made a quick example of TTL, or time to live).
Armor increases TTL, reduces damage taken per hit and makes life for the healers a whole lot easier.
See how armor works there? HP isnt really the "end all" of all tanking stats. by all means no. lets move on to the next item.
Avoidance: Total Avoidance is the sum of several stats, including Dodge, Parry, and Block. These stats are the basis of helping a tank NOT take damage. What i mean is a dodged attach will hit for zero damage. a parried attack will hit for zero damage. block is a different animal and has its own damage reduction amounts and things. but we know for sure one thing, dodge and parry negates 100% of any hit.
So lets take block out of the equation to make things simpler and pretend we're talking about DK tanks or bear tanks.
Lets take the tank from the Armor example and say he has 40k health, with 50% damage mitigation from armor. that is what we'll work with.
Lets say it's a DK with a dodge percentage of 24% and a parry percentage of 21%. This gives the DK a total of 45% avoidance.
This means that 45% of the mobs attack will not hit the dk at all. With some math here, we can estimate that per swing, the mob will get about 2750 damage. since each swing is 1 second apart, the tank will essentially take 2750 damage per second. with a tank of 40k health, it will take the mob 14.55 seconds to kill the tank.
Now 14.55 seconds is better than 8 seconds (armor only) and a whole lot better than 4 seconds (no mitigation).
Note/Edit: Please note that avoidance is on "chance per swing" and not an actual percentage of damage reduction. because of this, if you get unlucky and get hit on all swings, your TTL will actually be 8 seconds. If you're lucky and are missed on all swings, your TTL will be indefinite, or forever. Because of this reasoning, a more statistical analysis will have to be done, as in, if each hit from a boss has a 45% chance to miss (55% chance to land), what's the probability that the tank will survive for 15 seconds? i believe this will result in some z-score and bell curve with deviations and such. but if all swings were to be distributed evenly, i would give the tank about 15 seconds to live. again, more complex (and more accurate) calculations can be fould elsewhere. i am merely giving an overview, showing the basic concept.
To Sum Things Up
I know this has been a long post but i really wanted to go through just what exactly soaks up damage. i know that on a 1 to 1 ratio, health points can be seen and understood universally among everyone. if a mob hits a tank for 3k damage, that's 3k health gone. but what they do not see is that the mob usually hits everyone else for 8k damage and that the tank is often parrying or dodging attacks more than half of the time. they dont see that. dps usually does not see that. it is really only the tank and healers who really see this mechanic at work. why else would a boss 1hit a warlock to death? but dps doesnt see that and calls himself a squishy. sure, he's truly a squishy, but he doesnt exactly know why or how or what it all really means.
AND in order to help ease the minds of these misguided dps, the tanks do not take the time to explain all of this to the dps. instead, they appease the dps by gemming for stamina, enchanting for stamina, use health/stamina enhancing armorkits and drink elixirs of mighty fortitude. The tanks end up trying to make the dps and healers feel a little more at ease by enhancing the only number the dps and healers can actually see but because of this, they leave little room, if any, for other stats like armor and avoidance.
True, as people gear up, they will encounter gear with higher amounts of stamina and armor. so why bother when you already have 560 defense rating and a billion armor points? shouldnt they be entitled to spread out their stats with more stamina/health? well with better armor comes more stamina anyway, so the inverse can also be argued. why not gem defense when you now have more stamina? see what i did there?
But instead, i see bear tanks gemming for stamina. I see dk's gemming for stamina. i see paladins and warriors gemming for stamina. and as a healer, i always have to cringe at these tanks. i hate, as much as i complain about boring heroic runs, i hate healing 50k health tanks who stack stamina. i constantly have to heal them. there is really no break for me at all in heroics when healing these guys. this takes a toll on the healer (so the dps, although they feel really comfortable running along with a 50k health tank, they dont realize that there is less time and mana for me to heal them should they need any kind of healing) and when we get into harder fights where there's collateral damage, aoe damage, or just random damage, i find little time to heal the dps or myself.
ATTENTION ALL TANKS: THERE ARE BETTER STATS THAN STAMINA!!!
For bears:
Gem for Agility. Agility (Agi) will increase your armor. with the bear shapeshift multiplier to armor, you get even more armor per point of agi than the other plate wearing classes would.
Agi also increases your dodge percentage. this is your only aviodance stat, so beef (or bear) it up as much as you can with agi. Its really easy for bears. we only need one stat to deal with.
For plate wearers:
Gem for Defense even past the crit immune level (currently at 535 for heroics and 540 for raids). The more Defense (Def) you have, the more you're able to dodge and parry at the very least. not only will you increase your chance to avoid a hit, you're also giving yourself a Def buffer should you get a better piece of gear with less Def but having more Armor/Stam/Dodge/Parry/etc.
You cannot gem for Armor, but you can enchant and use armor kits for more armor. However, i would try to go for the best piece of gear with the highest built-in armor, gem for defense, enchant it with stats, armsman, or threat.
For both bears and plate wearers: There are plenty of resources online. I know things can be confusing and information can be scattered over the internet. but the information is out there. If you have any questions or need directions on where to go for your class, please feel free to reply and i will try my best to point you in the right direction.
Also, there is the argument about magical damage ignoring all armor and even avoidance. In this case, if armor and avoidance are negated, then a thinking person would indeed switch out his gear and use some magic resistance gear or stamina gear. Now if the fight was a mix of mostly physical hits with some magic damage, then the thinking person will have to evaluate which he prefers to mitigate and which would be more important to mitigate on the whole of the fight. you can always change gear after the fight to suit the needs of the next fight.
Again, to all tanks, there are better stats that just stamina. to all dps and maybe healers, there are much better ways to guage and judge a tank than by his health pool.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Why Tanking Tanked still
First off, i cannot come up with a better title. sorry. But this is the third part of my posts on why tanking, for me, has tanked and why i would love to DPS forever and ever and ever. much to the chagrin of a few of my friends who enjoyed insta-queues and solid tanking, i've decided to stop tanking for a while. at least until everyone stops thinking that a tank with 25k health sucks (because, believe it or not, thats how a lot of people judge tanks). i am guilty of judging tanks by their health sometimes. this is one of the few reasons that i've decided to stop tanking.
Many of the reasons why i like tanking are a double edged sword. the more modern term (as popularized by a song) is "it cuts both ways". and here is why i believe tanking sucks for me. the reasons will be similar to the previous post, but it will have its own little angle.
1. DPS. Regarding dps in a group, i know tanks "should" be at the bottom. but since everyone's geared to the teeth (actually, about 4.5k gs, and should be doing about 3-4k dps in heroics) due to the whole triumph emblems dropping out of the sky like rain, tanks doing 1k dps are having a difficult time holding aggro vs. a happy-go-lucky, trigger happy dps who's just there trying to pass the time. he wouldnt even target what the tank is targetting, in fact, i've come across a bunch of dps (mainly hunters) who would purposely target the mob the tank is not targeting in order to see if he can burn down the mob before it reaches him. actually, it might be pretty fun for the overgeared hunter. but for the tank, it causes headaches. and with the increase in dps and with no one having the sense to actually slow down a bit if they're constantly pulling aggro, even with Vigilence, Hand of Salvation and various taunts, tanking becomes less fun.
i use my taunts for certain situations, and this includes overzealous dps. but i dont want to use my taunts entirely for them. there are certain fights where i know i'll get an add or two and will save the taunt for that (or charge, or intercept, or hand of reckoning, or deathgrip), but i wouldnt be able to use it anymore if a dps were to keep pulling aggro from me.
also, tanking as a warrior or druid requires a few seconds of charge-up time where they need to be able to do their damage, build up rage and maintain their aggro lead. many dps find it necessary to skip this step and move forward.
with that said, i think that the main issue here is NOT that tanks need more threat modifiers or that they need more dps to keep up since higher dps means higher threat (although this is one of the ways to solve it). The solution here is to have the dps WAIT. but no one's going to wait when they're stupidly overgeared for heroics and want to get their frosties ASAP. no one. so something in the system is causing this and it is causing me, who's stuck at around 4.5k gs, with a certain amount of health and dps, to keep up with everyone who thinks they're running with a 6.0k gs geared tank. impossible.
2. Planning/Leading. My second point is planning and leading a small group. back in the days where the LFD required actual converstaion, i was given the opportunity to talk to many people before the group actually started. this helped my planning in that i would know the makeup of my group, as well, the skill of some of the players. this lead my to decide how i would want to pace myself, if i can just do the instance silently or if i would have to stop to give directions. my pulls would be almost always the same but the pace might change depending on the situation.
also, i was able to build relationships with other players and i ended up getting used to how they dps/heal/slacked. the LFD system will not allow me to do much of that, if any. i do not know who my group members are beforehand, nor do i get to choose them (although LFD does try to balance everything out. i mean EVERYTHING. at least one ranged, one melee. no double classes unless its a tank and dps with the same class. or unless someone drops. but you will almost never find the same class of people running togehter. ever. two rogues? never. two dks? never. two shamans? never. unless one is dps and the other heals.)
and everyone expects to "gogogogogogo". i get this in so many groups. once i had to let a dps die and a healer drop because i wouldnt pull without everyone ready. they yelled at me and called me the worse tank ever. im glad i dont need any re-affirmation of my abilities from people. i see the results for myself and know im doing a good job.
3. Situation Awareness. Having situation awareness means i see whats going on in most cases and need to react. if i react too slowly, people will die. if i react too fast, no one cares. im only doing my job. situation awareness, for me, is really a personal issue at best. so with that said, i do have to watch my baby when she's running around, watch people to make sure they're not being stupid, and watch the patrols and mobs and puddles and void zones and fires and other bad things to make sure i stay alive.
all this watching requires energy. and frankly, i've just about lost all my energy watching other people. it does take a lot out of me to watch the screen. although its fun, and im not saying i dont like it, it's just too much. its been draining on me, personally, for quite a while. and this is why i enjoy dps sooooo much. because i can put blinders on and follow the tank. often, i do find myself saving the clothie or healer. but i find that im slowly letting go of that reaction. dps all the way baby!! and this leads me to my next point...
4. Responsibility for the well-being of the group. im basically sick of this. it takes a lot to pull correctly, to make sure my melee doesnt stand too close to the next group, to make sure the pathers dont pick up the healers, to make sure everyone is on the right mob. then there's the blame game in the end where someone said something about another being a fail this or a fail that. and then i have to decide whether its better to just drop group or kick the offender.
in most groups, i get to be guide or leader and its only because i am the tank. so with that title, i would have to decide what to do in certain situations. its great to have all this responsibility, but i tire of it. i really do. its not because i dont want it. i live and thrive for things like this. tanking fits me well because i think it helps me fulfill some of these roles and help me do it in a gaming environment. but i do see that i am tiring of the people and their "stupid" who i group with moreso than the byproducts of tanking. after much rambling and typing away, i do believe i got it. eureka!! people stink.
To close, all of the points above require effort. and sorry, im fresh out of effort. its not rewarding effort anymore. its just a fact that the face of heroics have changed for the worse, through the makeup of the group, the mechanics in finding a group and finally to the people behind the groups themselves. as much as i want to believe bliz is trying its best to group people of similar gear and output (not just gaer, but OUTPUT matters), we'll never really get to a point where its guaranteed that a new tank will get matched up with new dps and heals. i experienced just the opposite last night when my group consisted of a 6k gs dps, two 4.5k dps and a brand new, 2.5k gs tank. i healed it and it was a blast. but the one high gs dps did have to slow up a little. when using LFD, there is really no way to help sustain the quality of the group, as the group is formed at "random". and i say that loosely. even still, we can expect people to be jerks and drop, afk, or yell googogoogogogogogog. finally, the people need to change their approach to heroics. please know that you're joining a random with different people who may have different interests and needs apart from you. some just want to see what its like and others are just trying to get their daily frosties. some are on their alts and others decided to find a group 15 minutes before dinner starts. all of these people need to remember that they are play with others and that their action do effect the mood and satisfaction of this game for other people.
and that is why i do not like to tank anymore.
Many of the reasons why i like tanking are a double edged sword. the more modern term (as popularized by a song) is "it cuts both ways". and here is why i believe tanking sucks for me. the reasons will be similar to the previous post, but it will have its own little angle.
1. DPS. Regarding dps in a group, i know tanks "should" be at the bottom. but since everyone's geared to the teeth (actually, about 4.5k gs, and should be doing about 3-4k dps in heroics) due to the whole triumph emblems dropping out of the sky like rain, tanks doing 1k dps are having a difficult time holding aggro vs. a happy-go-lucky, trigger happy dps who's just there trying to pass the time. he wouldnt even target what the tank is targetting, in fact, i've come across a bunch of dps (mainly hunters) who would purposely target the mob the tank is not targeting in order to see if he can burn down the mob before it reaches him. actually, it might be pretty fun for the overgeared hunter. but for the tank, it causes headaches. and with the increase in dps and with no one having the sense to actually slow down a bit if they're constantly pulling aggro, even with Vigilence, Hand of Salvation and various taunts, tanking becomes less fun.
i use my taunts for certain situations, and this includes overzealous dps. but i dont want to use my taunts entirely for them. there are certain fights where i know i'll get an add or two and will save the taunt for that (or charge, or intercept, or hand of reckoning, or deathgrip), but i wouldnt be able to use it anymore if a dps were to keep pulling aggro from me.
also, tanking as a warrior or druid requires a few seconds of charge-up time where they need to be able to do their damage, build up rage and maintain their aggro lead. many dps find it necessary to skip this step and move forward.
with that said, i think that the main issue here is NOT that tanks need more threat modifiers or that they need more dps to keep up since higher dps means higher threat (although this is one of the ways to solve it). The solution here is to have the dps WAIT. but no one's going to wait when they're stupidly overgeared for heroics and want to get their frosties ASAP. no one. so something in the system is causing this and it is causing me, who's stuck at around 4.5k gs, with a certain amount of health and dps, to keep up with everyone who thinks they're running with a 6.0k gs geared tank. impossible.
2. Planning/Leading. My second point is planning and leading a small group. back in the days where the LFD required actual converstaion, i was given the opportunity to talk to many people before the group actually started. this helped my planning in that i would know the makeup of my group, as well, the skill of some of the players. this lead my to decide how i would want to pace myself, if i can just do the instance silently or if i would have to stop to give directions. my pulls would be almost always the same but the pace might change depending on the situation.
also, i was able to build relationships with other players and i ended up getting used to how they dps/heal/slacked. the LFD system will not allow me to do much of that, if any. i do not know who my group members are beforehand, nor do i get to choose them (although LFD does try to balance everything out. i mean EVERYTHING. at least one ranged, one melee. no double classes unless its a tank and dps with the same class. or unless someone drops. but you will almost never find the same class of people running togehter. ever. two rogues? never. two dks? never. two shamans? never. unless one is dps and the other heals.)
and everyone expects to "gogogogogogo". i get this in so many groups. once i had to let a dps die and a healer drop because i wouldnt pull without everyone ready. they yelled at me and called me the worse tank ever. im glad i dont need any re-affirmation of my abilities from people. i see the results for myself and know im doing a good job.
3. Situation Awareness. Having situation awareness means i see whats going on in most cases and need to react. if i react too slowly, people will die. if i react too fast, no one cares. im only doing my job. situation awareness, for me, is really a personal issue at best. so with that said, i do have to watch my baby when she's running around, watch people to make sure they're not being stupid, and watch the patrols and mobs and puddles and void zones and fires and other bad things to make sure i stay alive.
all this watching requires energy. and frankly, i've just about lost all my energy watching other people. it does take a lot out of me to watch the screen. although its fun, and im not saying i dont like it, it's just too much. its been draining on me, personally, for quite a while. and this is why i enjoy dps sooooo much. because i can put blinders on and follow the tank. often, i do find myself saving the clothie or healer. but i find that im slowly letting go of that reaction. dps all the way baby!! and this leads me to my next point...
4. Responsibility for the well-being of the group. im basically sick of this. it takes a lot to pull correctly, to make sure my melee doesnt stand too close to the next group, to make sure the pathers dont pick up the healers, to make sure everyone is on the right mob. then there's the blame game in the end where someone said something about another being a fail this or a fail that. and then i have to decide whether its better to just drop group or kick the offender.
in most groups, i get to be guide or leader and its only because i am the tank. so with that title, i would have to decide what to do in certain situations. its great to have all this responsibility, but i tire of it. i really do. its not because i dont want it. i live and thrive for things like this. tanking fits me well because i think it helps me fulfill some of these roles and help me do it in a gaming environment. but i do see that i am tiring of the people and their "stupid" who i group with moreso than the byproducts of tanking. after much rambling and typing away, i do believe i got it. eureka!! people stink.
To close, all of the points above require effort. and sorry, im fresh out of effort. its not rewarding effort anymore. its just a fact that the face of heroics have changed for the worse, through the makeup of the group, the mechanics in finding a group and finally to the people behind the groups themselves. as much as i want to believe bliz is trying its best to group people of similar gear and output (not just gaer, but OUTPUT matters), we'll never really get to a point where its guaranteed that a new tank will get matched up with new dps and heals. i experienced just the opposite last night when my group consisted of a 6k gs dps, two 4.5k dps and a brand new, 2.5k gs tank. i healed it and it was a blast. but the one high gs dps did have to slow up a little. when using LFD, there is really no way to help sustain the quality of the group, as the group is formed at "random". and i say that loosely. even still, we can expect people to be jerks and drop, afk, or yell googogoogogogogogog. finally, the people need to change their approach to heroics. please know that you're joining a random with different people who may have different interests and needs apart from you. some just want to see what its like and others are just trying to get their daily frosties. some are on their alts and others decided to find a group 15 minutes before dinner starts. all of these people need to remember that they are play with others and that their action do effect the mood and satisfaction of this game for other people.
and that is why i do not like to tank anymore.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Why Tanking Tanked too
When I began tanking, I had a very hard time getting my priorities right. Although I had the idea down (keep all the mobs attention on me) I was not able to execute it very well. I read through all of my spells and knew what they were for. I understood my talents, the mob's abilities and my role throughout the fights. I just didn’t "get it" until a little later on, when it clicked, and everything became automatic.
what I thought was my role was still clouded by the dps meter. I still tried to get as much damage as I can. and when I see healthbars drop, I attributed the cause to my awesome swipe or maul. however, swipe and maul does craptastic damage compared to other classes doing the damage. when I read the damage meters, I realize that I am at the very bottom, which is what it should be. but it didn’t click for me. no I thought I had some damage to do. but it wasn’t until I raided (when I was doing practically no damage) that I understood my role more completely. and I don’t raid often, if ever. but when I finally did, I was in Naxx, and it showed me just how much damage I was actually doing compared to people who are doing more than double my damage. and that's the major idea. most of the fights involved timed taunting by the tanks. other fights require me pulling certain mobs while the other tank pull other mobs. I found my job had very little to do with damage and more to do with management. this helped me understand the concept of tanking much better than any five man instance. and yet, I cant get myself to raid more (although if I had a day all to myself, I would raid).
as the lead of any group, the tank usually would be the one to plan out the pulls. I began by asking questions about each pull, but after a while, it got kinda tiresome and I decided I should just learn each pull as I go. for those of you who have no idea what a "pull" looks like, the dungeon/instance in wow are laid out in a way where mobs are found in packs. there are packs of two, three, four, etc. some move, some are stationary. it is the tank's job to simply decide where he needs to "pull" each group. sometimes he can run up to them, other times, he'll need to pull the group to himself or to a designated area. other times he needs to watch out for other mobs walking and know not to include them in the pull. sometimes he'll want to. with all of these, there is a little bit of planning involved. I like planning. There is an art to getting the mobs to do what you want it to do. The puzzle involves melee mobs, ranged mobs, and boss mobs. tanking involves a sense of awareness and quick reflexes you don’t usually need when playing dps. when playing a dps, im usually stuck watching my rotations, or my cooldowns, or the health of the mob I am currently targeting. however, with tanking, I not only have to watch all of the above, I also have to watch for stray mobs, for mobs I lose aggro on, for possible changes in the battle that would cause me to lose my healer, etc. with tanking, there's just so much more I have to think about and react to. I think it is much more dynamic than dps.
again, one of the main reasons why I like tanking is because I get to plan out my pulls. as well, I also need to plan out my abilities during the fights so that I can have something ready should anything go wrong. and there are many things that can go wrong. a dps doing too much dps. a healer's heal landing just a second too early. a patrol walking by because the dps was standing too close to their path. the healer disconnecting and I am left to try to take out as much as I can before I die. etc. stuff like that. what I hate about other tanks is that they don’t do half of what tanks are supposed to do. I get tanks who run into a group of mobs and decide to tank them where they stand, never caring about moving them around or anything. as a melee dps, I oftentimes wonder if they even know that if I were to enter the fight and stand behind the mob, I will pull aggro from another group. nope. they don’t think about that. also, they don’t face the group. its really dumb when everyone else can see adds hitting the tank or another dps and the tank is oblivious to it because he is NOT facing the group. sometimes I want to smack these tanks. anyway, planning the pulls involves positioning. I want to pull mobs towards me in a certain way, then position them where I can tank them and be able to see my party, or the pathing mobs should there be any. there are some pulls where I know there will be pathing mobs. what do I do? I save my taunt for that. in any case, again, the main idea here is planning. then positioning.
the next idea that I like about tanking is responsibility the tank has in regards to the well-being of the group as well as the pace of the instance itself. some tanks like to rush through things. others like to take it slow. I am somewhere in between where I simply watch my healer's mana and make sure they're keeping up well. sometimes I don’t stop much but when I do, its for a reason. I do want people to catch up and be part of the party. I don’t need to enter into a fight with only half of my group there. i do want to enter with full force, as I find it being more efficient and will get us through the fight faster. for the dps who keeps yelling gogoogogo, I want to slap them. or slow down a bit. lol
I am also the one responsible for most of the bad things that happen. and the only bad thing that happens in groups is when we die. so we start over again. but as we run back, we all have an idea of what went wrong and what we can do to fix the problem. I think that's a very important part of playing the game. it is in knowing what everyone can do to help everyone else out and end up with the victory. its there in the small scale in 5-man instances, but you will see it more in raids. although this is this a large responsibility (although the consequence is very small when messing up, and the major portion of the consequence is a social consequence more than anything else), it is a responsibility shared by both the tank and the healer. I think this is why tanks and healers have such a good relationship with each other (except for now that we have this random dungeon finder, and any tank/healer combination that could have blossomed into a good relationship, we find less and less of these matchups. it is simply the nature of the tool itself).
basically tanking helps me to lead a group. I set the pace. and the "fun" of the group depends really on my pace. also, if I mess up, the healer and dps will die. so I have a sense of responsibility towards others more than myself. finally, for each pull, I have to plan each one out. although going through heroics 100x times already, I don’t have to think about this anymore, as every pull becomes a variation of another, more basic pull, that, and they never change.
so this is why I liked the tanking aspect of the game. it was brand new to be for a while and it kept me playing this game a little longer, after the soloing to level portion of the game ended. I mean, after so many daily quests, I can only do so much else before I die of boredom. this part of the game was still new to me and I realized really quickly that tanking matched my personality much better than dps (ranged or melee) and healing. but healing comes in a close second!
My next post will be about why I got sick of tanking. yes, even though I have this matching personality to tanks, I did grow tired of it. more to come!
what I thought was my role was still clouded by the dps meter. I still tried to get as much damage as I can. and when I see healthbars drop, I attributed the cause to my awesome swipe or maul. however, swipe and maul does craptastic damage compared to other classes doing the damage. when I read the damage meters, I realize that I am at the very bottom, which is what it should be. but it didn’t click for me. no I thought I had some damage to do. but it wasn’t until I raided (when I was doing practically no damage) that I understood my role more completely. and I don’t raid often, if ever. but when I finally did, I was in Naxx, and it showed me just how much damage I was actually doing compared to people who are doing more than double my damage. and that's the major idea. most of the fights involved timed taunting by the tanks. other fights require me pulling certain mobs while the other tank pull other mobs. I found my job had very little to do with damage and more to do with management. this helped me understand the concept of tanking much better than any five man instance. and yet, I cant get myself to raid more (although if I had a day all to myself, I would raid).
as the lead of any group, the tank usually would be the one to plan out the pulls. I began by asking questions about each pull, but after a while, it got kinda tiresome and I decided I should just learn each pull as I go. for those of you who have no idea what a "pull" looks like, the dungeon/instance in wow are laid out in a way where mobs are found in packs. there are packs of two, three, four, etc. some move, some are stationary. it is the tank's job to simply decide where he needs to "pull" each group. sometimes he can run up to them, other times, he'll need to pull the group to himself or to a designated area. other times he needs to watch out for other mobs walking and know not to include them in the pull. sometimes he'll want to. with all of these, there is a little bit of planning involved. I like planning. There is an art to getting the mobs to do what you want it to do. The puzzle involves melee mobs, ranged mobs, and boss mobs. tanking involves a sense of awareness and quick reflexes you don’t usually need when playing dps. when playing a dps, im usually stuck watching my rotations, or my cooldowns, or the health of the mob I am currently targeting. however, with tanking, I not only have to watch all of the above, I also have to watch for stray mobs, for mobs I lose aggro on, for possible changes in the battle that would cause me to lose my healer, etc. with tanking, there's just so much more I have to think about and react to. I think it is much more dynamic than dps.
again, one of the main reasons why I like tanking is because I get to plan out my pulls. as well, I also need to plan out my abilities during the fights so that I can have something ready should anything go wrong. and there are many things that can go wrong. a dps doing too much dps. a healer's heal landing just a second too early. a patrol walking by because the dps was standing too close to their path. the healer disconnecting and I am left to try to take out as much as I can before I die. etc. stuff like that. what I hate about other tanks is that they don’t do half of what tanks are supposed to do. I get tanks who run into a group of mobs and decide to tank them where they stand, never caring about moving them around or anything. as a melee dps, I oftentimes wonder if they even know that if I were to enter the fight and stand behind the mob, I will pull aggro from another group. nope. they don’t think about that. also, they don’t face the group. its really dumb when everyone else can see adds hitting the tank or another dps and the tank is oblivious to it because he is NOT facing the group. sometimes I want to smack these tanks. anyway, planning the pulls involves positioning. I want to pull mobs towards me in a certain way, then position them where I can tank them and be able to see my party, or the pathing mobs should there be any. there are some pulls where I know there will be pathing mobs. what do I do? I save my taunt for that. in any case, again, the main idea here is planning. then positioning.
the next idea that I like about tanking is responsibility the tank has in regards to the well-being of the group as well as the pace of the instance itself. some tanks like to rush through things. others like to take it slow. I am somewhere in between where I simply watch my healer's mana and make sure they're keeping up well. sometimes I don’t stop much but when I do, its for a reason. I do want people to catch up and be part of the party. I don’t need to enter into a fight with only half of my group there. i do want to enter with full force, as I find it being more efficient and will get us through the fight faster. for the dps who keeps yelling gogoogogo, I want to slap them. or slow down a bit. lol
I am also the one responsible for most of the bad things that happen. and the only bad thing that happens in groups is when we die. so we start over again. but as we run back, we all have an idea of what went wrong and what we can do to fix the problem. I think that's a very important part of playing the game. it is in knowing what everyone can do to help everyone else out and end up with the victory. its there in the small scale in 5-man instances, but you will see it more in raids. although this is this a large responsibility (although the consequence is very small when messing up, and the major portion of the consequence is a social consequence more than anything else), it is a responsibility shared by both the tank and the healer. I think this is why tanks and healers have such a good relationship with each other (except for now that we have this random dungeon finder, and any tank/healer combination that could have blossomed into a good relationship, we find less and less of these matchups. it is simply the nature of the tool itself).
basically tanking helps me to lead a group. I set the pace. and the "fun" of the group depends really on my pace. also, if I mess up, the healer and dps will die. so I have a sense of responsibility towards others more than myself. finally, for each pull, I have to plan each one out. although going through heroics 100x times already, I don’t have to think about this anymore, as every pull becomes a variation of another, more basic pull, that, and they never change.
so this is why I liked the tanking aspect of the game. it was brand new to be for a while and it kept me playing this game a little longer, after the soloing to level portion of the game ended. I mean, after so many daily quests, I can only do so much else before I die of boredom. this part of the game was still new to me and I realized really quickly that tanking matched my personality much better than dps (ranged or melee) and healing. but healing comes in a close second!
My next post will be about why I got sick of tanking. yes, even though I have this matching personality to tanks, I did grow tired of it. more to come!
Why Tanking Tanked
I want to blog today about my overall play in wow over the past several years, of how it developed from one style of play (mainly dps, to healing and tanking) to another. I want to mention that this is just an introductory to what I really want to talk about, and that is why I took a break from tanking.
Now I started this game in October of 2007 as a human mage running around and using blink as my only way of gaining speed while running through the large world. from the getgo, I was an altaholic (a person who plays many characters) and decided to make myself a hunter, a warlock and a priest. these classes appealed to me in a certain way similar to my previous games. however, I didn’t realize it then, but these classes (hunter, warlock, priest, mage) played very different from the same classes in the other games that I've played. How it was different, was that there was much risk in starting combat. when I would play games like Gauntlet or Fable, or similar, the spells and attacks that I use would completely destroy the computer characters (mobs). Especially in gauntlet, I would be smashing the attack button without end because there were so many mobs, and each mob dies after one or three hits. but in WoW, most fights required a one-on-one approach. not only that, but there are tools for every class to use just in case the fight turned into a two-on-one affair. it took me a few days to get this right, as I started playing on a mage. I would die very often in the beginning due to constantly getting attacked by everything around me.
add to that an array of spells we can use, casting times for the caster, distance limitations, and low health (I was playing a mage, after all) it became a much more in-depth game where my decisions to attack a mob was considered very carefully. on this note, I'd like to add that anyone wanting to play this game should learn to play as a warlock, mage or rogue first. these guys are easy to kill, but have tools in their spellbook that make them hard to kill. if that made any sense. it will make you a better player, honestly.
so after about fourty levels of playing very carefully as a mage, I decided to play a more forgiving class. I switched to a hunter and played him til he was about level 60. it was a lot easier as a hunter, as I learned to use my pet to take most of my damage and learned feign death, jumpshots, distracting shots, and all these other different hunter tricks to use to get out of bad situations. but after 60 levels, things got a little boring as playing a hunter became nothing more than to send in your pet, then shoot from afar. that's it. collect loot and move on.
then I played a warlock. I was constantly sucking life/health out of my victims and giving it to me, so I was able to take a lot of damage as I play. it was one of the funnest classes I've ever played. but still, there was something about playing a warlock that got me bored after a while. so I quit.
I went and made a character on the horde side (in wow, there are two sides, horde and alliance. they are enemies and have different races. these two factions have the same classes of characters, but different races and starting areas.) my first horde character was a druid who leveled as a feral cat. a druid is a class that has a shapeshifting focus, where different abilities and specialities are obtained by our shapeshifted forms. the cat is a very agile and sneaky creature, and can produce a lot of damage up close. I like the way I can sneak up on things and destroy it before it can even respond. once killed, I slip right back into the shadows. this sounds just like another class in wow called the rogue. but there are differences.
in any case, I leveled this character all the way to level 70 at that time. and then leveled her to 80 when the expansion hit. yes, I made a female character. my mage, warlock and hunter have all been males.
I think the most important thing to note about this character is that I was not killing things from far away. as a hunter, I would stand back and shoot, as a mage and warlock, I would stand back and cast spells. but as a feral druid cat, I had to come up close. most of my attacks were instant (no casting) but had a slight cooldown due to my resource management. this keeps me from spamming too many attacks at once. instead, it forces me to choose my attacks wisely.
upon playing a druid, I realized that I am very much into playing a melee character. a melee is a physical attack up close, pronounced may-lay. a melee is a fight where people are fighting with their fists, swords, knives, battons, etc. it is not a fight where people are shooting at each other. that's a shootout. or a firefight. and a character in this game that specializes in close combat is considered a "melee" character. those who fight at range are called "ranged".
I know im doing a lot of vocab into my post. but this is because I realize there are a few people who do not play this game reading my blog. also, there's some who might not know the terms since they play like, once a week, or less.
in any case, in playing a feral druid, I was able to play as a cat and a bear. whoa! what's a bear got to do with this? well bears are supposed to be able to take big hits and still survive, while doing substantial damage. well kinda. in real life, bears hit like a truck. but in wow, bears hit like pansies. but they take lots of damage. so this is the tanking role in wow. and I've played as a tank from 70-80 and enjoyed it. when I started doing heroics, it was sort of difficult to really begin since everyone playing at that time was getting level appropriate gear. I loved that it was difficult to play, and I think that's the reason why I became pretty good at playing as a tank. it was difficult. healers had some trouble healing me. and I liked that. I can also get into the nitty… I gem for agi and not stam, etc. but I wont mention too much of that here.
in fact, I did so well in heroics I decided to do 10-man raids. this was the days Naxxramas was THE raid and we all went there to get better gear. I got nice shoulders from it. but other than that, I didn’t really get anything else to help my tanking. a hunter beat me on a roll for a staff. (rolling is what we do to determine who gets what if there are more than one person that wants a drop. so at one boss, a staff drops and both I and a hunter wanted the drop. of course, it was made for a druid, but the stats on the staff was also awesome for the hunter. I didn’t mind since it would improve his stats overall). in any case, harping about drops aside, I really enjoyed tanking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to level up four different tanking classes. in wow, there are a total of four classes that are able to perform as tanks. they include feral druids (in bear form), paladins, warriors and death knights. what's interesting about each of these classes is that they all use different resource managements (except for bears and warriors, with some minor differences between the two). I almost did it. Almost because I stopped short with the warrior. he's still level 65. but I plan to level him to 80 and hit the heroic circuit to gear him up…. next month!
and in gaining 4 tanks, I've learned pretty well how to tank, in general. the positioning, the taunts, the resource management, and all the little nuances and shortfall that comes with each tanking class. I find that paladins are the least involved (ie, easiest to use), and warriors the most involved. druids and dk's are in the middle due to their somewhat complicated resource system but ease of spell usage. now of the four, my favorite tanking class would have to be the paladin, not really because of their ease of use, but really because they have a shield. warriors also have this advantage. I think this keeps the damage steady. with druids, it is the same thing. the worse I think, would be the DK, as they tend to take a lot of damage when they do get hit. the spikiness of the deathknight(DK) damage really turns me off from this class, as well as the reaction from many healers about how they don’t like healing dks. actually, I've healed many tanks in my wow life and I've gotta say, DKs are the worse as well.
in any case, this is the end of my intro to my thoughts on tanking and how I got here. I believe there needs to be a bit of a history as to why I started tanking, or at least, how tanking fits me. I'll save that for the next post. as well, I think I'll also mention about why I stopped. I think this is really the purpose of the this and the next post…. why I don’t like tanking anymore.
-----------------------------
just a side note for all those who do not play wow, there is a part of the game where we enter dungeons as a group to kill harder bosses and get better rewards. what is required in all groups are characters from one of three roles. There should always be one tank (or the damage soaker and attention grabber). There should also be one healer. if you have two for any reason, one or both of the healer is a bad healer. there should never, NEVER be a need for two healers in a 5-man dungeon so long as everyone is appropriately leveled. the remaining three characters should be damage dealers. these damage dealers are called DPS, as they provide the dps or damage-per-second. we generally refer to characters by their role. tank. heals. dps. I don’t know why heals is plural. it just is.
in a dungeon (in wow, theyre also called instances), the tank starts the fight by grabbing the mobs' attention first. then the dps follow suit by attacking the mobs and the healer will react to most damage by healing. also, healers have this ability to "decurse" where they can remove a negative effect from characters in their party if they happen to be able to. bad healers don’t know how to use this. good healers will use this often. in any case, there's rules for every class as they contribute to the progression of the group. you'll have to pick it up as you go along.
Now I started this game in October of 2007 as a human mage running around and using blink as my only way of gaining speed while running through the large world. from the getgo, I was an altaholic (a person who plays many characters) and decided to make myself a hunter, a warlock and a priest. these classes appealed to me in a certain way similar to my previous games. however, I didn’t realize it then, but these classes (hunter, warlock, priest, mage) played very different from the same classes in the other games that I've played. How it was different, was that there was much risk in starting combat. when I would play games like Gauntlet or Fable, or similar, the spells and attacks that I use would completely destroy the computer characters (mobs). Especially in gauntlet, I would be smashing the attack button without end because there were so many mobs, and each mob dies after one or three hits. but in WoW, most fights required a one-on-one approach. not only that, but there are tools for every class to use just in case the fight turned into a two-on-one affair. it took me a few days to get this right, as I started playing on a mage. I would die very often in the beginning due to constantly getting attacked by everything around me.
add to that an array of spells we can use, casting times for the caster, distance limitations, and low health (I was playing a mage, after all) it became a much more in-depth game where my decisions to attack a mob was considered very carefully. on this note, I'd like to add that anyone wanting to play this game should learn to play as a warlock, mage or rogue first. these guys are easy to kill, but have tools in their spellbook that make them hard to kill. if that made any sense. it will make you a better player, honestly.
so after about fourty levels of playing very carefully as a mage, I decided to play a more forgiving class. I switched to a hunter and played him til he was about level 60. it was a lot easier as a hunter, as I learned to use my pet to take most of my damage and learned feign death, jumpshots, distracting shots, and all these other different hunter tricks to use to get out of bad situations. but after 60 levels, things got a little boring as playing a hunter became nothing more than to send in your pet, then shoot from afar. that's it. collect loot and move on.
then I played a warlock. I was constantly sucking life/health out of my victims and giving it to me, so I was able to take a lot of damage as I play. it was one of the funnest classes I've ever played. but still, there was something about playing a warlock that got me bored after a while. so I quit.
I went and made a character on the horde side (in wow, there are two sides, horde and alliance. they are enemies and have different races. these two factions have the same classes of characters, but different races and starting areas.) my first horde character was a druid who leveled as a feral cat. a druid is a class that has a shapeshifting focus, where different abilities and specialities are obtained by our shapeshifted forms. the cat is a very agile and sneaky creature, and can produce a lot of damage up close. I like the way I can sneak up on things and destroy it before it can even respond. once killed, I slip right back into the shadows. this sounds just like another class in wow called the rogue. but there are differences.
in any case, I leveled this character all the way to level 70 at that time. and then leveled her to 80 when the expansion hit. yes, I made a female character. my mage, warlock and hunter have all been males.
I think the most important thing to note about this character is that I was not killing things from far away. as a hunter, I would stand back and shoot, as a mage and warlock, I would stand back and cast spells. but as a feral druid cat, I had to come up close. most of my attacks were instant (no casting) but had a slight cooldown due to my resource management. this keeps me from spamming too many attacks at once. instead, it forces me to choose my attacks wisely.
upon playing a druid, I realized that I am very much into playing a melee character. a melee is a physical attack up close, pronounced may-lay. a melee is a fight where people are fighting with their fists, swords, knives, battons, etc. it is not a fight where people are shooting at each other. that's a shootout. or a firefight. and a character in this game that specializes in close combat is considered a "melee" character. those who fight at range are called "ranged".
I know im doing a lot of vocab into my post. but this is because I realize there are a few people who do not play this game reading my blog. also, there's some who might not know the terms since they play like, once a week, or less.
in any case, in playing a feral druid, I was able to play as a cat and a bear. whoa! what's a bear got to do with this? well bears are supposed to be able to take big hits and still survive, while doing substantial damage. well kinda. in real life, bears hit like a truck. but in wow, bears hit like pansies. but they take lots of damage. so this is the tanking role in wow. and I've played as a tank from 70-80 and enjoyed it. when I started doing heroics, it was sort of difficult to really begin since everyone playing at that time was getting level appropriate gear. I loved that it was difficult to play, and I think that's the reason why I became pretty good at playing as a tank. it was difficult. healers had some trouble healing me. and I liked that. I can also get into the nitty… I gem for agi and not stam, etc. but I wont mention too much of that here.
in fact, I did so well in heroics I decided to do 10-man raids. this was the days Naxxramas was THE raid and we all went there to get better gear. I got nice shoulders from it. but other than that, I didn’t really get anything else to help my tanking. a hunter beat me on a roll for a staff. (rolling is what we do to determine who gets what if there are more than one person that wants a drop. so at one boss, a staff drops and both I and a hunter wanted the drop. of course, it was made for a druid, but the stats on the staff was also awesome for the hunter. I didn’t mind since it would improve his stats overall). in any case, harping about drops aside, I really enjoyed tanking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to level up four different tanking classes. in wow, there are a total of four classes that are able to perform as tanks. they include feral druids (in bear form), paladins, warriors and death knights. what's interesting about each of these classes is that they all use different resource managements (except for bears and warriors, with some minor differences between the two). I almost did it. Almost because I stopped short with the warrior. he's still level 65. but I plan to level him to 80 and hit the heroic circuit to gear him up…. next month!
and in gaining 4 tanks, I've learned pretty well how to tank, in general. the positioning, the taunts, the resource management, and all the little nuances and shortfall that comes with each tanking class. I find that paladins are the least involved (ie, easiest to use), and warriors the most involved. druids and dk's are in the middle due to their somewhat complicated resource system but ease of spell usage. now of the four, my favorite tanking class would have to be the paladin, not really because of their ease of use, but really because they have a shield. warriors also have this advantage. I think this keeps the damage steady. with druids, it is the same thing. the worse I think, would be the DK, as they tend to take a lot of damage when they do get hit. the spikiness of the deathknight(DK) damage really turns me off from this class, as well as the reaction from many healers about how they don’t like healing dks. actually, I've healed many tanks in my wow life and I've gotta say, DKs are the worse as well.
in any case, this is the end of my intro to my thoughts on tanking and how I got here. I believe there needs to be a bit of a history as to why I started tanking, or at least, how tanking fits me. I'll save that for the next post. as well, I think I'll also mention about why I stopped. I think this is really the purpose of the this and the next post…. why I don’t like tanking anymore.
-----------------------------
just a side note for all those who do not play wow, there is a part of the game where we enter dungeons as a group to kill harder bosses and get better rewards. what is required in all groups are characters from one of three roles. There should always be one tank (or the damage soaker and attention grabber). There should also be one healer. if you have two for any reason, one or both of the healer is a bad healer. there should never, NEVER be a need for two healers in a 5-man dungeon so long as everyone is appropriately leveled. the remaining three characters should be damage dealers. these damage dealers are called DPS, as they provide the dps or damage-per-second. we generally refer to characters by their role. tank. heals. dps. I don’t know why heals is plural. it just is.
in a dungeon (in wow, theyre also called instances), the tank starts the fight by grabbing the mobs' attention first. then the dps follow suit by attacking the mobs and the healer will react to most damage by healing. also, healers have this ability to "decurse" where they can remove a negative effect from characters in their party if they happen to be able to. bad healers don’t know how to use this. good healers will use this often. in any case, there's rules for every class as they contribute to the progression of the group. you'll have to pick it up as you go along.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The General Concept of Tanking
I just wanted to post a little about tanking, taunting, pulling, etc. There was a paladin running halls of stone with me the other night who wanted to know how well he did. so i chimed in with a suggestion. i was running nexus with manda and met a paladin who, although never asked for help, was criticized by the two dps (two fury warriros, unfortunately also in my server) who stated that the tank was fail because he was using seal of wisdom. i chimed in with some spells and some suggestions. he took it really well. the two warriors left after the instance without much help, no suggestions, nada. way to go. Sons of Liches, i wont be partying with any of you any time soon. anyway, that aside, i've also noted some very interesting behavior among many tanks throughout my LFD experience.
Lets pick this up from the very basic, high level concept. Tanks do not evolve. That's basically it. they dont evolve. either because they went dual spec at 40 and is forever stuck at the level 40 style of tanking instances while leveling/questing in dps spec, or they simply do not get anyone in their group to tell them they suck. well actually they might not suck. they might just be getting zero feedback. i am guilty of some of this, where i find myself in a group with an ok tank or even a bad tank, but just wanna get things over with and hope that, for the tank's own sake, he goes and looks up some tanking blogs/sites/videos. but i do not know how often that happens. i wonder if they even think their tanking isnt stellar and would look something up without anyone in the group complaining or mentioning, productively, that the tank should L2P.
I have been thinking about doing several blog posts on tanking. one about pulling. another about positioning. another about cooldowns, taunts, resource conservation, etc. maybe the positioning/pulilng should be one post, as it is closely related.
In any case, the first pala tank asked in halls of stone, after the instance was over, how he did. i mentioned that he should turn around and look at his party in order to see adds and such. the instance where the two warriors were attacking the paladin, i simply spelled out what i used to conserve mana since the tank was using seal of wisdom. the warriors figured he was a fail tank. however, he was doing just fine, but he could have been doing much better with actual "tanking" seals and blessings. you know. those designed by bliz to tank with.
Lets go through the basics of each class.
The Stance:
1. Warrior: Defensive Stance. you get this at level 10 through a quest. use it. it increases your threat and allows you to do certain moves that's reserved for Defensive stance.
2. Death Knight: Use Frost Presence. this is not a talent spec. this is a "Stance" that you use. the other two presences do different things but is only beneficial for dps. tanks should stay with the defensive Frost Presence.
3. Druids: Bear Form or Dire Bear Form. This form, like frost presence and defensive stance, adds high threat to your attacks and increases your survival.
4. Paladins: The tanking Stance, Form, Presence for the paladin consists of two parts. one, he must use Righteous Fury. this is a buff that stays on forever, until the paladin dies. This increases threat and, if improved, will reduce a bit of damage. The second part is found in a blessing, Blessing of the Sanctuary. This blessing will increase health and will return mana to the paladin after every successful dodge or parry. this is THE blessing for the tanking paladin. As for "seals", we'll worry about that later.
The Pull:
All tanks are gifted with some very nifty pulling abilities. some pull by charging into a group of mobs while others pull the mobs to a common, middle ground. vary rarely should you see a tank pulling mobs to where the group is standing (which causes a lot of problems for the ranged dps who, for the most part, would like to remain... ranged).
There are several key considerations to take before, during and after the pull.
Consider before the pull the makeup of the mobs. Healers? Casters? Melee? What is the mix? can you also pull a group without pulling pats (patrols)? or if you're pulling pats, can you pull without pulling another group with them?
Also before the pull, consider where you want to pull them and, most importantly, where you want them to face. it does matter greatly where the mobs face after the pull.
Consider during the pull whether all the mobs are running to where YOU want them to run. During the pull, watch out for stray bullets from happyhunter, or deathgrip from doopidDK. i've done this a few times and apologize profusely for it.
Also during the pull, look out for your timing, as the pull may be too late and you may end up pulling some patrols or another group, or even the pather that's behind your group.
Consider after the pull whether you are on the target you need to be on. Know that changing targets often can confuse dps, will definitely cause more damage done to you (and subsequently, more healing needed to you) prolongs the fight and may cause loss of aggro. You may want to consider using raid icons if you do switch targets often. This way a dps will know who to target no matter who you may target yourself. Consider whether the group is safe where you're tanking. Remember that you should, for the most part, have your party in view. meaning, you turn the mobs away from the party. remember, as the tank, you're the one taking all the damage. so keep it that way by facing the mobs away from your party. if a mob does a knockback, make sure your back is against a wall. if the dps can be knocked back into another group, make sure you posistion yourself so that they will be knocked back "safely". If the group is safe from new adds and the possibility of pulling unwanted groups during the fight, then your next concern will be on the dynamics of the group of mobs itself.
Since there are four different types of tanks, and some odd ones, i will not be covering them specifically in a fight. however, i will state the common, overall concerns of every tank. Threat.
The ultimate goal for any tank is to control an encounter, whether its a group of mobs or a boss fight with adds or enrange timers, the whole game is about control. This has to be in the tank's head before anything else. how he gains control is different for every class he plays, as well as for every situation/encounter he experiences. but the goal is the same. he needs to control the situation. when i tank, this is my goal. i want every mob to do exactly what i want it to do.
For example, society controls the individual through laws, values, mores, etc. Individuals control a car through its pedals, steering wheel, fancy use of toe-heel, lol, etc. Tanks control their game through threat. Think of it that way. your threat is your key to control. and how you move around the gameboard of the dungeon will only enchance or hinder your control. i'd say, 75% of the "control" fight is through use of the dungeon layout, in positioning, in pulling and movement. only 25% of the fight is really a battle between you and your dps. it should be even less. but we dont live in a perfect world. so lets just round it to about 25%.
Again, i dont want to get into further details on how to pull without really discussing specifics, as in, specific tank, specific instance, specific party and specific mob group. What i do want to emphasize is that there are many variables to consider while tanking and how we plan out the pull will really be the determining factor as to whether a pull is a good pull or a bad pull. note, i consider bad pulls to be any that involves the melee dps having to run around the tank. this leads to less time for the dps to dps and also provide a possibility for the dps to accidentally pull another group.
So with that though, let me just list a few pointers when tanking.
1. Know your rotations. yes, know them inside and out. know when you will get your Runes off cooldown, know when you can use DnD again, know when you're able to use your taunt, avengers shield, charge, intercept, mangle, bash, etc. know your rotations and know your ohsht spells.
2. Know your taunts. put them on your action bar. do not make them mouseclicks only. taunt often. practice it. Some classes have two taunts.
3. Know your backup taunts. they are not really taunts. but ways to get aggro should your taunts not work. some would prioritize this before your taunts, or use it depending on the situation. Charge, deathgrip, intercept, silences, stuns, bubbles.
4. Zoom OUT. see the big picture. dont get sucked into tunnel vision tanking. looking at closeup graphics of a boss' crotch is great, but you still want to see the big picture. if im against a wall, i usually just use the bird's eye view.
5. Face the party. This means the mobs face away from the party. this helps the dps in many many ways. a) melee will not have to run around you to attack, thereby reducing the chances they may pull another group. b) the mob's frontal area of effect attacks will not hit the party (think Ingvar's Smash and Anub's Pound). c) You can see your party members and taunt when stray mobs attack them. how else will you sue your taunts and back up taunts? you have to see the party to do this.
6. Do not pull with a taunt. folks, please, for the sake of all kittens everywhere, pull with an actual attack or pseudo taunt. heck, use heroic throw, back up, then charge. yes. do that. its not as easy as using a taunt, but still. some classes get cool ones like avenger's shield. i even pull with exorcism sometimes. bears can fff. or feral faerie fire. then charge. dk's, i know you like deathgrip, but only do that if you know you wont need it in the near future. you can pull with deathcoil if you have enough runic power, or strangulate. if you have enough room you can run in and icy touch, switch to a caster and strangulate him, then go back to your main target. its not that hard to avoid the taunt. its actually more fun. srsly folks. save your taunts for when you actually want to taunt. pulling is something entirely different.
7. use your defensive cooldowns often. this helps the healers. every class has one. they are all played the same now. no really. every tanking class is the same now. IBF, Barkskin, Shield Wall, Hand of Protection. as well as the "plus % health" spells we all get. i forgot the names. but they're there. last stand, survival instincts. heck, paladins can sacred shield themselves. i know i do! dk have different abilities depending on spec. know they're there and they are very useful.
8. STOP GEMMING STAM. please.. you get enough stam from your gear. stop gemming stam and please gem defense (or agi for bears). i hate, absolutely HATE healing tanks who gem stam. unless you're doing an easy instance and are ICC10/25 geared, then sure, youre avoidance rocks anyway and stam doesnt really matter, its icing on the cake. but if we're doing difficult content (ie. emblem of triumph geared bear doing heroic forge, pit, or halls of reflection in ALL stam gems and stam chants) i'll hate you for it. you might live longer, but im doing nonstop healing. NONSTOP i say!
I am sure i'll think of more pointers. but these are the ones i can think of right now. anyway, hope this is a good general guideline in tanking (although i'll probably get zero feedback on this post). i will try to post more about positioning later. as well, i will try to post about priorities as well. sometimes i do wonder why clothie mobs dont all die first.
Lets pick this up from the very basic, high level concept. Tanks do not evolve. That's basically it. they dont evolve. either because they went dual spec at 40 and is forever stuck at the level 40 style of tanking instances while leveling/questing in dps spec, or they simply do not get anyone in their group to tell them they suck. well actually they might not suck. they might just be getting zero feedback. i am guilty of some of this, where i find myself in a group with an ok tank or even a bad tank, but just wanna get things over with and hope that, for the tank's own sake, he goes and looks up some tanking blogs/sites/videos. but i do not know how often that happens. i wonder if they even think their tanking isnt stellar and would look something up without anyone in the group complaining or mentioning, productively, that the tank should L2P.
I have been thinking about doing several blog posts on tanking. one about pulling. another about positioning. another about cooldowns, taunts, resource conservation, etc. maybe the positioning/pulilng should be one post, as it is closely related.
In any case, the first pala tank asked in halls of stone, after the instance was over, how he did. i mentioned that he should turn around and look at his party in order to see adds and such. the instance where the two warriors were attacking the paladin, i simply spelled out what i used to conserve mana since the tank was using seal of wisdom. the warriors figured he was a fail tank. however, he was doing just fine, but he could have been doing much better with actual "tanking" seals and blessings. you know. those designed by bliz to tank with.
Lets go through the basics of each class.
The Stance:
1. Warrior: Defensive Stance. you get this at level 10 through a quest. use it. it increases your threat and allows you to do certain moves that's reserved for Defensive stance.
2. Death Knight: Use Frost Presence. this is not a talent spec. this is a "Stance" that you use. the other two presences do different things but is only beneficial for dps. tanks should stay with the defensive Frost Presence.
3. Druids: Bear Form or Dire Bear Form. This form, like frost presence and defensive stance, adds high threat to your attacks and increases your survival.
4. Paladins: The tanking Stance, Form, Presence for the paladin consists of two parts. one, he must use Righteous Fury. this is a buff that stays on forever, until the paladin dies. This increases threat and, if improved, will reduce a bit of damage. The second part is found in a blessing, Blessing of the Sanctuary. This blessing will increase health and will return mana to the paladin after every successful dodge or parry. this is THE blessing for the tanking paladin. As for "seals", we'll worry about that later.
The Pull:
All tanks are gifted with some very nifty pulling abilities. some pull by charging into a group of mobs while others pull the mobs to a common, middle ground. vary rarely should you see a tank pulling mobs to where the group is standing (which causes a lot of problems for the ranged dps who, for the most part, would like to remain... ranged).
There are several key considerations to take before, during and after the pull.
Consider before the pull the makeup of the mobs. Healers? Casters? Melee? What is the mix? can you also pull a group without pulling pats (patrols)? or if you're pulling pats, can you pull without pulling another group with them?
Also before the pull, consider where you want to pull them and, most importantly, where you want them to face. it does matter greatly where the mobs face after the pull.
Consider during the pull whether all the mobs are running to where YOU want them to run. During the pull, watch out for stray bullets from happyhunter, or deathgrip from doopidDK. i've done this a few times and apologize profusely for it.
Also during the pull, look out for your timing, as the pull may be too late and you may end up pulling some patrols or another group, or even the pather that's behind your group.
Consider after the pull whether you are on the target you need to be on. Know that changing targets often can confuse dps, will definitely cause more damage done to you (and subsequently, more healing needed to you) prolongs the fight and may cause loss of aggro. You may want to consider using raid icons if you do switch targets often. This way a dps will know who to target no matter who you may target yourself. Consider whether the group is safe where you're tanking. Remember that you should, for the most part, have your party in view. meaning, you turn the mobs away from the party. remember, as the tank, you're the one taking all the damage. so keep it that way by facing the mobs away from your party. if a mob does a knockback, make sure your back is against a wall. if the dps can be knocked back into another group, make sure you posistion yourself so that they will be knocked back "safely". If the group is safe from new adds and the possibility of pulling unwanted groups during the fight, then your next concern will be on the dynamics of the group of mobs itself.
Since there are four different types of tanks, and some odd ones, i will not be covering them specifically in a fight. however, i will state the common, overall concerns of every tank. Threat.
The ultimate goal for any tank is to control an encounter, whether its a group of mobs or a boss fight with adds or enrange timers, the whole game is about control. This has to be in the tank's head before anything else. how he gains control is different for every class he plays, as well as for every situation/encounter he experiences. but the goal is the same. he needs to control the situation. when i tank, this is my goal. i want every mob to do exactly what i want it to do.
For example, society controls the individual through laws, values, mores, etc. Individuals control a car through its pedals, steering wheel, fancy use of toe-heel, lol, etc. Tanks control their game through threat. Think of it that way. your threat is your key to control. and how you move around the gameboard of the dungeon will only enchance or hinder your control. i'd say, 75% of the "control" fight is through use of the dungeon layout, in positioning, in pulling and movement. only 25% of the fight is really a battle between you and your dps. it should be even less. but we dont live in a perfect world. so lets just round it to about 25%.
Again, i dont want to get into further details on how to pull without really discussing specifics, as in, specific tank, specific instance, specific party and specific mob group. What i do want to emphasize is that there are many variables to consider while tanking and how we plan out the pull will really be the determining factor as to whether a pull is a good pull or a bad pull. note, i consider bad pulls to be any that involves the melee dps having to run around the tank. this leads to less time for the dps to dps and also provide a possibility for the dps to accidentally pull another group.
So with that though, let me just list a few pointers when tanking.
1. Know your rotations. yes, know them inside and out. know when you will get your Runes off cooldown, know when you can use DnD again, know when you're able to use your taunt, avengers shield, charge, intercept, mangle, bash, etc. know your rotations and know your ohsht spells.
2. Know your taunts. put them on your action bar. do not make them mouseclicks only. taunt often. practice it. Some classes have two taunts.
3. Know your backup taunts. they are not really taunts. but ways to get aggro should your taunts not work. some would prioritize this before your taunts, or use it depending on the situation. Charge, deathgrip, intercept, silences, stuns, bubbles.
4. Zoom OUT. see the big picture. dont get sucked into tunnel vision tanking. looking at closeup graphics of a boss' crotch is great, but you still want to see the big picture. if im against a wall, i usually just use the bird's eye view.
5. Face the party. This means the mobs face away from the party. this helps the dps in many many ways. a) melee will not have to run around you to attack, thereby reducing the chances they may pull another group. b) the mob's frontal area of effect attacks will not hit the party (think Ingvar's Smash and Anub's Pound). c) You can see your party members and taunt when stray mobs attack them. how else will you sue your taunts and back up taunts? you have to see the party to do this.
6. Do not pull with a taunt. folks, please, for the sake of all kittens everywhere, pull with an actual attack or pseudo taunt. heck, use heroic throw, back up, then charge. yes. do that. its not as easy as using a taunt, but still. some classes get cool ones like avenger's shield. i even pull with exorcism sometimes. bears can fff. or feral faerie fire. then charge. dk's, i know you like deathgrip, but only do that if you know you wont need it in the near future. you can pull with deathcoil if you have enough runic power, or strangulate. if you have enough room you can run in and icy touch, switch to a caster and strangulate him, then go back to your main target. its not that hard to avoid the taunt. its actually more fun. srsly folks. save your taunts for when you actually want to taunt. pulling is something entirely different.
7. use your defensive cooldowns often. this helps the healers. every class has one. they are all played the same now. no really. every tanking class is the same now. IBF, Barkskin, Shield Wall, Hand of Protection. as well as the "plus % health" spells we all get. i forgot the names. but they're there. last stand, survival instincts. heck, paladins can sacred shield themselves. i know i do! dk have different abilities depending on spec. know they're there and they are very useful.
8. STOP GEMMING STAM. please.. you get enough stam from your gear. stop gemming stam and please gem defense (or agi for bears). i hate, absolutely HATE healing tanks who gem stam. unless you're doing an easy instance and are ICC10/25 geared, then sure, youre avoidance rocks anyway and stam doesnt really matter, its icing on the cake. but if we're doing difficult content (ie. emblem of triumph geared bear doing heroic forge, pit, or halls of reflection in ALL stam gems and stam chants) i'll hate you for it. you might live longer, but im doing nonstop healing. NONSTOP i say!
I am sure i'll think of more pointers. but these are the ones i can think of right now. anyway, hope this is a good general guideline in tanking (although i'll probably get zero feedback on this post). i will try to post more about positioning later. as well, i will try to post about priorities as well. sometimes i do wonder why clothie mobs dont all die first.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The itching doesn't stop
*This post was written a day ago**
Last night was pretty interesting. I queued up on my pala to dps at level 46. We went got Orange Mara. I found myself in a group with four friends from the same server, two in the same guild and two in different guilds. I was the fifth, their third dps. So we started off pulling this fighting plants one by one, which kept my dps at around 100. That was fine. Mara is a little more difficult and the beginning was mainly single target pulls. Some two-target pulls (the patrolling Satyr chicks), and packs of slimes and worms. The slimes needed to be kited, and the worms die really quick. The plant mobs have this knockdown attack that stops all attacks for a few seconds. its basically a stun. The pala tank was randomly using Judgement of Wisdom and Light, so I got a bit fed up and just used Justice. There, no overriding judgements. lol
Last night was pretty interesting. I queued up on my pala to dps at level 46. We went got Orange Mara. I found myself in a group with four friends from the same server, two in the same guild and two in different guilds. I was the fifth, their third dps. So we started off pulling this fighting plants one by one, which kept my dps at around 100. That was fine. Mara is a little more difficult and the beginning was mainly single target pulls. Some two-target pulls (the patrolling Satyr chicks), and packs of slimes and worms. The slimes needed to be kited, and the worms die really quick. The plant mobs have this knockdown attack that stops all attacks for a few seconds. its basically a stun. The pala tank was randomly using Judgement of Wisdom and Light, so I got a bit fed up and just used Justice. There, no overriding judgements. lol
In any case, the instance was super short with the water elemental boss and the big plant boss. I'm not sure if we can venture into the rest of the instance since after the plant boss, we requeued and got Zul Farrak. Now this one's fun, and I can actually justify using judgement of justice. Not only are there no knockdowns, knockbacks, silences, etc (ok well there's some silences and some hexing going on), it is, for the most part, a stress-free instance and I was able to get my dps up past 300 dps at times. overall it was roughly 250dps, which was ahead of the tank at 200 and the warlock at 170. I'm loving my top position as dps, even though its still AoE dps. but im not looking down on AoE. its still awesome to look at. im still killing things and contributing to the group. on boss fights, im second, sometimes third. I don’t mind. I actually have no problems being second, or third on the dps charts so long as we get our job done.
And getting the job done is what I like to do. So oftentimes, I sacrifice dps (lol really? its not bleeding edge progressing my a longshot) for some "fun" and utility. who has fun anymore in instances? but fun I have. and fun I'll continue to get. see the warlock pulling aggro from DoTs+Rain of Fire? I use my Righteous Defense on the lock. same with the healer. since everyone basically defaults to their AoE attacks, when a clothie pulls aggro, they're gonna pull more than one mob. so i wait about two seconds for the tank to react. then I taunt them off the poor dps/heals on to me. better they attack me than the clothie… always.
So there, that's my itch… my itch to bi… er… switch. to switch to prot. or tank. or something. I almost made it a song! it would have been featured on yo gaba gaba! but yea. the itching doesn’t stop, and I find that it makes dps way more fun than just, well, dps. im going to turn my vuhdo oh and add a rightclick to taunt, and a scrollwheel up to purify, and a scrollwheel down to cleanse, and maybe a leftclick to FoL should I get a AoW proc in which I don’t need to Exo or FoL on myself. Usually in groups, I never need to FoL myself and exo is almost always on cooldown.
So there I go again, always wanting to do more than just dps. but I find that fun. can you blame me? and what's more fun thank saving the day by tanking some mobs? im sure the healer didn’t mind that I pulled all the mobs off of him. maybe it wasn’t that necessary to pull the mobs off of the warlock, since death to warlock meant the mobs go back to the tank automatically. but we're not all here for by-the-book playing. we're here for for-the-fun playing. I enjoy all the times where I am able to use purify on someone. im glad for the comments address to the healer, "nice dispells" and I interrupt any question as to who that comment was directed to by saying, "thanks!" its gonna be even more fun once I get my vuhdo working. think of it as a healbot+decursive+clique all in one. in any case, im a tank at heart, and if a healer is getting hit by some mobs and the tank isnt taunting them off, then its up to me, the tank-in-disguise, to peel those mobs off the healer and save the day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)