It's Raining. I Swear!

So, while I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to blogging on a regular basis again, I really feel inspired to write at the moment. Lately, I've been feeling the urge to return to my furry roots when we start moving into Northrend (Which means The Rambling Bear will likely REMAIN The Rambling Bear, not the Rambling 'Lock or some such). However, I've also been keeping a close eye on WotLK developments, and the current feral druid situation in the beta has me very, very worried. After reading today's installment of the Big Bear Butt (from which today's title comes, by the way), I've come to the point where I have to speak my mind.

Now, before I start my ramblings, let me make one huge disclaimer. I am not in the beta. Nor am I a psychic. And I realize that feral druids are still due a major second pass by the development team. I know that what is currently on beta is not what will be going live. But I also remember what it was like to be a horribly underpowered spec that people laughed at.

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The reports I've been hearing from the Beta are bleak. The most poingant of them comes from a guildmate of mine who plays a healer, and has been in Naxx10 with a variety of tanks. In short, Warriors and Paladins are rock solid, and a breeze to heal. Death Knights are a bit squishy, but their self healing abilities help to mitigate some of that. But bears are about as resilient as a wet sponge, and are a huge pain in the ass to keep alive.

This doesn't surprise me, though. Blizzard has taken away bears' one true claim to fame: our huge amounts of armor. In fact, they've stopped itemizing for feral druids altogether, we now have to wear rogue gear. I read somewhere that a bear in the best set of level 80 blue gear has somewhere around 29k armor. Meanwhile, my T4 geared arse sports 33.5k. On top of that, we no longer get an extremely high Agi->Dodge ratio.

"But Surania, look at all the awesome tanking talents we're getting to make up for that!".

Ok, lets look at those amazing new tanking talents:

We get another 6% "baked in" dodge for three talent points. Adding that to the 4% we already had, that gives us a total of 10% avoidance from talents. Guess what, folks, Warriors and Paladins get that, too, though half of theirs is parry. Our only advantage here is that we only spend 5 talent points, and they spend 10.

We get 12% across-the-board mitigation for three talent points. Warriors have this, more or less, as a base ability. Theirs (Defensive Stance) is only 10% mitigation, but they get a talent that boosts their spell mitigation to 16% (And judging from what Magisters' Terrace looks like, I expect to see more and more spell damage getting flung around in the expansion). Also, we can lose this mitigation during fights, while warriors can not. I don't know if you still get the full bonus if a party member dies, but I imagine it starts dropping if one of your allies gets mind controlled, and wouldn't be surprised if you suddenly lose some mitigation if a raid member loses connection suddenly during a fight.

We get an emergency button on a 5-minute cooldown for our 51-point talent. Last stand, to be exact. It's actually a bit stronger than the warrior ability, in that it has a shorter cooldown (8 minutes for warriors). And it also boosts our ability to generate threat while active, which is a nice side effect for sure. But I'm not worried about threat, really, I'm worried about survival. So great, we get last stand. As a sidenote, Paladins are getting a shield wall of sorts, themselves, in a re-tooled Divine Protection which only reduces damage taken by half, but does not drop aggro any more, and is on a much, much shorter cooldown than shield wall. And it also stacks very nicely with Ardent Defender, since SW tends to get popped when low on health to begin with.

We get crushing blow immunity. As do all tanks. The mechanic has been changed to only happen when mobs are 4+ levels above you. We also retain our crit immunity, as SotF has had its effect doubled.

We do still get a bit more armor than our plate brethren. The figure I've read (which I don't have a link to at the moment) seems to indicate bears will have about 6k more armor than plate wearers, 28k armor to 22k armor. Nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but it's nowhere near what we have now. Oh, and we still seem to have slightly more health, too, an extra 10% or so.

So, we're looking like plate tanks with extra armor, right? Well, kind of, except our one advantage (~6k more armor, and a slight health advantage) is offset by lots of things we DON'T have:

We don't get a block mechanic. Sure, blocking is no longer as critical as it once was, since bosses will no longer crush tanks, but at the same time, blocking has been seriously buffed via a revamped strength->block value formula. I haven't seen any numbers as far as how much a level 80, geared warrior or paladin blocks for, but I imagine it's probably breaking 4-digits per block. That, alone, will likely make up for our armor advantage.

We don't get parry. This alone wouldn't be a problem, but since they're also taking away druids' favorable agi->dodge conversion, and not giving us bear tank gear with +dodge or even +defense on it, our ability to avoid attacks is far lower than our plate brethren.

We don't get as many "Oh, shit" buttons as warriors. I'm not saying we should, but the fact is they get both shield wall and last stand, while we only get the latter.

So, basically, we get to be more-or-less on par with plate wearers as far as mitigating each hit goes, but we also are getting hit a lot more often. I have a solution, though, and it would, I think, both be thematically appropriate (as bear fur really shouldn't be harder to penetrate than iron plates) and a fair tradeoff.

Make Nurturing Instinct apply to all forms. I really think it's as simple as that. We get hit, say, 30% more often than plate tanks, but it's 20% easier to heal us back up from those hits. Combined with our health pool advantage, I think this simple change would make bear tanks able to compete with warriors and paladins, but without overshadowing them. We'd retain a bit of our flavor, as we'd be slightly less resistant to death by spike damage (due to the health pool), but would take a bit more mana to keep up under normal circumstances.

Think about it, Blizzard. The best solution to a problem is often the simplest, after all. Continue reading 'It's Raining. I Swear!'

Yet Another PvP Gear Rant

Yep, again. This time, I'm moved to speak by a recent post by the guy who (indirectly) got me into blogging: The Big Bear Butt himself, who seems to have a number of misgivings about the gear system, himself.

Now, while I've spoken a number of times about how I dislike the alternative routes by which a person can obtain epics of equal or greater value than the raid gear available to myself, I feel like I have yet to really hit the nail on the head. Not only do I feel like I keep coming out of it misunderstood and misrepresented, but I feel that I have yet to even fully pin down why I loathe PvP and badge gear in my own mind. I just know that I do. But bear with me, while I try once again.

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I've come to realize that my problem isn't that the PvP gear system is "E-Z mode Epix", but is instead that most people seem to BELIEVE thats the case. And because of that, everybody and their brother, especially these days, seems to do nothing but grind out PvP gear. Now sure, there are plenty of people who enjoy PvP, but I see people who hate it even more than I do in there, every stinking day, grinding out honor and Arena points (And shush, I know you can't truly grind out Arena points, just like you can't grind out Vashj drops). And while 90% of my guild, and the server as a whole, is in doing PvP instances, my PvE oriented self rarely, if ever, gets to do a 5-man instance run or, god forbid, a Kara badge run.

Quick sidenote: I still hate the fact that there are badge rewards better than the T5 gear I currently wear. I absolutely loathe that I have to grind Karazhan to keep up with my guildmates in gear, even if I make it to every single raid we have, simply because you can get better gear running Kara than you can running SSC/TK. But, as BBB said, "If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying, to use an old Marine (or Navy) saying… meaning, if you’re not using every advantage you can to win, you didn’t deserve to in the first place." Of course, that requires actually getting badges, which requires getting people to do PvE instances (unless, of course, blizzard decides to replace battleground tokens with heroic badges, which ironically would both enable me to upgrade my gear more easily, while simulatneously making me hate the system even more).

So anyhow, its not that I begrudge people that want to do PvP the opportunity, but instead is the fact that the people I used to run instances with (On, mind you, a PvE server) are no longer available because they're too busy grinding in PvP for the next "Phat Purp", because for a server like mine, PvP gear is the best raiding gear you're going to get your hands on. Sure, if you happen to be in a guild that has Illidan on farm and is working through Sunwell Plateau, the only reason you need to PvP is if you want to be good at PvP, or get PvP gear for, you guessed it, PvPing. Though honestly, I haven't compared the season 4 gear to top end raiding gear, so even that may not be true any more *shrug*.

Wait a second, this sounds familiar. A die-hard PvEer, complaining that the people that do PvP get an unfair advantage outside of PvP? Now is it just me, or was it only a couple years ago that the PvP community was constantly complaining that raiders, in their shiny T2/2.5/3 epics, had an unfair advantage in battlegrounds? I mean, I could be dead wrong here, having never been a PvP-oriented person myself (Like I would be a druid back then if I was . . . ), but I'm fairly certain I remember hearing a rather loud volume of QQ over the gear imbalance back in the day. And while it isn't completely the same (Top-end PvP gear is comparable to top-end PvE gear, as opposed to towering over it in quality), I think the similarity bears mention.

But there's another factor in play here. Like I said, people used to complain about top-end raiders decimating PvP with their overpowered gear. That was before resilience. Nowadays, raiding gear is really only good for raiding. PvPing in raid gear these days is like healing in a moonkin set: It's technically possible, and better than nothing, but if you want to be any good you really need to get a set of gear tailor made for the task at hand. The reason for this is resilience. When Blizzard introduced resilience rating to the game, it changed the face of PvP forever (well, not quit forever, but we'll get to that). It used to be that a huge health total was the hallmark of a good PvPer. Nowadays, that huge health pool needs to be augmented with a huge chunk of resilience rating to do you any good. And guess what, 99% of raid gear has exactly 0 resilience on it. So while your 50% crit rate and 4000 attack power might have made you a ganking God back in the day, the guy you just attacked with 350+ resilience is going to /laugh and /spit in your face when he absolutely rips you apart.

Now, to a degree, resilience also limits the usefulness of PvP gear in raiding. After all, resilience eats up item budget, but is a (near) useless stat in PvE. However, as any decent feral druid will point out, having a part of your item budget spent on a useless stat *coughintellectcough* does not necessarily make an item useless. Missing a vital stat entirely, on the other hand (Sunwell T6 feral pieces with no stamina during beta testing, anybody?) does. Thus, we have this double standard, where the PvE gear I get from raiding wouldn't really help me in PvP, should I decide to cross over, the Gladiator gear Joe Schmoe got from PvP allows him to keep up with my raiding gear rather nicely. But, from what I hear, that won't last forever. . . supposedly, Blizzard is looking to remove Resilience in WotLK. A move which, ironically, will help raiders more than it helps the PvPers who complained about the stat in the first place.

So, there you have it. My current two complaints about PvP gear: it kills (or at least seems to kill) the instancing pool, and PvP gear functions much better in PvE than PvE gear does in PvP.

PS: The next time someone tells me I should just go grind PvP gear to equip my alts, instead of complaining about a lack of people willing to run 5-mans, I'm going to smash my keyboard upside their head until they hear me when I say I don't like PvP in this game, I do not like it Sam I Am. . . er, wait, what?

/equip flame retardant suit

Continue reading 'Yet Another PvP Gear Rant'

When is a Bear not a Bear

So, you all may have noticed lately that not only have I not been posting much, but when I DO post, it hasn't been about druids. Lately, all I've been talking about are my paladin and other holy men (Well, technically I was married by a judge, but thats neither here nor there). And while I imagine most people who read this blog find other classes to be interesting, the general idea behind a druid-themed blog is, in fact, discussion of the druid class.

So, whats with the absence of bear-tanking goodies lately? Well, I have a confession to make . . .

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I'm bored. In a general sense, I'm a bit bored with the game as a whole, mostly because of my inability to participate in the activities I really want to be a part of. I haven't been able to attend our thursday/friday raid nights for a long time now, and those are our boss farming days (at least I don't actually need any gear from the farm bosses on Surania due to a combination of crap itemization and obscenely overpowered badge gear). Weekend raiding in Prophecy has been largely hit-or-miss lately; I haven't seen the inside of a 25-man instance for three weeks now.

Heck, I can't even get into Karazhan raids half of the time, as everybody-and-their-mother runs it while I'm at work on tuesdays. The midnight run I once hosted has fallen prey to earlier runs, summer schedules, and a general apathy which seems to have been caused by a combination of people jumping to Age of Conan, an early-onset pre-expansion (hyphen-inducing) slump, and the start of summer. Poor Jasminne is still in fairly crappy gear (though she did finally save up the 75 badges for that sexy paladin tanking chest).

Honestly, that takes away half of the reason I play the game these days. 5-man content is nice and all, but I've done every damn instance so many times that the runs bore me to death. PvP . . . well, if I really wanted to PvP, I'd probably join the folks jumping ship for AoC. And low-level content? Yeah, I'm rolling yet ANOTHER alt just to fill my WoW playing time, but honestly its about as engaging as farming gold (which I also detest, by the way). And as for the other half of the reason I play? I love my guildies, and hanging out with them, but alas, most of the folks who are usually online when I can play have started a set of Horde alts who I have no hope to catch up to.

All of that contributes to my lack of posting in general. But there's one other thing. Something that is hard for me to admit to, especially here amongst my fellow Druids.

Surania has been boring the crap out of me.

Thats right. I'm bored of my druid. I haven't completely hammered down why I've lost interest in playing Surania, but I've come to realize a number of contributing factors:

1:) I'm a spoiled brat who misses the limelight. I remember the pre-BC days, when getting to occasionally offtank an add in a raid was a huge deal for me as a bear tank. Compared to those days, I have it damn good. But I'm selfish, and miss the days when Prophecy was young, with just a handful of 70s. Back then, I was THE go-to tank, the best geared and skilled meat shield. When we couldn't take down Prince Malchezaar because he kept killing the tank in phase two, *I* was the big gun called in to take the hits.

I didn't know it back then, but that Malchezaar kill was to be the last guild-first I would ever get to maintank. I was on Shaman duty the day we downed Maulgar. Gruul himself was being tanked by me when he died, but only because our actual maintank bit the bullet halfway through. The two T5 bosses guides commonly suggest using a bear tank on were tanked by warriors; I was cat DPS/add offtank the first time Tidewalker fell (despite trying to clue in the raid leader to bears' superiority in the MT role on that fight), and wore bark the first time we cleansed Leotheras of his inner demon for good.

I know, druids are the ideal offtanks, not main tanks. And I know that my limited play schedule means I really SHOULDN'T be getting the premium tanking gigs. But God damn, I miss the rush of adrenaline as the big, bad boss who was beating on my furry hide fell for the very first time. Its an incredibly addictive feeling.

2: The class no longer challenges me. Perhaps there will be new challenges when we start progressing full bore into T6 instances, but right now we're preparing to tackle the old 3/4 - 5/6 T5 gatekeeper bosses (Kael'thas and Vashj, for those who didn't know), and my tanking roles have been boring me. "Take [insert add name here] over to that corner and keep him busy." just isn't all that exciting, especially when said add is weak enough to be tanked by a fury warrior in half blues (that is, the majority of non-boss mobs, including many bossfight adds). Half of my tanking assignments, I could literally smack the mob with a mangle, move them to my spot, and then go AFK, autoattack generating ample threat to hold the mob until it dies.

Yes, I will admit, I HAVE done that during raids. So sue me.

3: I have nowhere to go from here. I look at loot lists for the bosses my guild is killing and shrug. I see plenty of gear I'd die for on my Paladin, or my Warlock, but nothing I give a crap about on Surania. Sure, I could definitely fight for some upgrades to my cat DPS set, but since I wear my tanking gear more often than my damage gear on raids, I've never felt right in taking the gear over rogues, hunters, and DPS warriors (assuming we had any, all our warriors are tanks for some reason). And anyhow, even if there were upgrades to my tanking set available, I don't earn much DKP (as most of it is earned on the farming nights, which I can't attend, or by farming raid materials, which as I mentioned earlier, I detest).

Not that getting upgrades would make much difference these days. Like I said, I'm usually tanking stuff that could be tanked by fury warriors in half blue gear.

So, in short, the class I once absolutely adored now has me absolutely a-bored. What's a guy to do? Well, I'm not 100% sure yet, but its looking more and more likely that, once WotLK hits, Kirari (my warlock) will become my main character. I never used to be much for straight damage-dealing characters in games, but I've become rather addicted to the affliction warlock lifestyle. And, on the plus side, if blizzard continues bringing out encounters like Shade of Aran, Teresian Illhoof, High King Maulgar, and Leotheras the Blind, I'll have plenty of interesting challenges that I, as a warlock, will be uniquely equipped to deal with.

Thats a decision to set in stone later on, though. I refuse to change mains before the expansion simply due to the fact that Surania has benefitted greatly from her time raiding with Prophecy in terms of gear. I would feel like I was cheating the guild if I did not continue to use said gear to further our raiding efforts until such time as said gear becomes obsolete. Not to mention, I'd never be able to catch up in gear if I switched mains now, I can't attend the raids Kirari's upgrades would drop in.

I'll try to come up with some druid-related topics to discuss in the future, I promise. I just don't want to bring you guys some half-assed, uninspired posts simply because I'm not feeling it.
Continue reading 'When is a Bear not a Bear'

Tank Shortage: Do You Believe?

Today's post isn't really a blog post at all. I just got done with a forum post in the Prophecy boards discussing what seems to be a growing problem: the dreaded tanking shortage. I used to not believe there was a shortage, but since I started playing level 70 alts, I've gotten to see things from a different perspective. In fact, I think the existance of alts, itself, is perhaps the biggest contributor to the problem. . . but I'll explain that later. So, here in its entirety, the seven reasons I see for the apparent tank shortage in Prophecy, on Steamwheedle Cartel, and I suspect in general.

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1: Legitimate tank unavailability. I don't get on until very late. [Prot Warrior 1] has been largely unavailable. I haven't seen [Prot Warrior 2] online in weeks. This is, I think, what people have been noticing most. We have tanks show up for raids, but outside of those raiding timeslots, many of our tanks just aren't available. However, I do not think this is the primary problem, just a part of the puzzle.

2: Lack of motivation to play. As I see it, there are four basic modes in which most people play the game: Grinding, Instancing, Raiding, and PvPing. Lets drop raiding from that list, since we're talking about activities outside of raid times. DPS classes/specs are good at all three of the remaining playstyles. Healers are good at two (not so good at grinding). Tanks are only good at instancing (Barring feral druids, of course, due to our dual nature). If a tank player wants to do anything other than run instances, they're better off logging on to a DPS or healing alt to do it, or respeccing to DPS (and thus still being unavailable as a tank), especially considering how dead our server is when it comes to instance running. Who wants to sit hopelessly on LFG while grinding on mobs as a prot spec?

3: Lack of alt tanks. This is where I see a large part of the problem being. We have a decent contingent of main characters who are tanks. But look at the active alts in our guild, at least at 70, and . . . well, I cant remember the last time I did anything with somebody's tank alt (It was probably a run with [Paladin Tank], who is now a main due to our losing our only other Prot paladin, and needing one for much of the upper level raid content). There are some healing alts, and plenty of DPS alts, but no tank alts, thus shifting the balance of available characters away from tanks.

4: Emphasis on alts. This one combines with #3 and further complicates matters. By and large, this guild's main characters are pretty geared up at this point. Most people, at most raiders, don't really have any upgrades they need from normal instances or heroics. At most they want the badges from heroic runs so they can buy pity-raid-epics from the badge vendor on Sunwell Island once the anvil is built. So, if our main characters have little to no reason to run instances, and our tanks are all main characters, we apply the transitive property (LOLmath) and come to the conclusion that our guild's tanks have no reason to run instances. THIS, I believe, is probably the biggest reason there are never any tanks available.

5: Stricter requirements. This is something that I think might contribute to the lack of tanking alts. Tanks need to be better at their job, and better geared, than other classes just to function at a basic level. Not trying to knock anyone's skill here, but I really, truly believe it. We're at the point now as a guild where we could probably bring a freshly minted DPS character geared in WHITES, have them sit in a safe corner in a heroic run, and 4-man the place to get gear for that person. Healers cant afford to be as undergeared, but ultimately with a T5-geared tank taking the hits, we've already proven that an offspec healer with so-so gear can heal through some rough heroics. An undergeared tank in a heroic, on the other hand, it a recipe for disaster. No matter how good a healer is, they cant keep a tank alive if they're being eaten by chain crits and have only 9k health. No matter how good the DPS is, they cant kill a mob fast enough to keep that from happening, because said tank doesn't have the gear to generate enough threat to keep the mob's attention, and the DPSers end up biting the dust first. So, while we can pretty easily gear up DPSers right as they hit 70 just by babysitting them through some heroics, tanks are a whole other ballgame, and having to gear up an alt slowly isn't that appealing, especially when, as I mentioned before, instance runs are few and far between on our server.

6: Tank demand burnout. A self-fulfilling dilemma, stemming initially from #1, but ultimately perpetuated by all of the points here. Because we have fewer tanks available, when a tank DOES come online they become an extremely hot commodity, like when a mage joins LFG -- Heroic Magisters' Terrace. And while its great to be wanted, its easy to get to the point where tanking runs turns from something fun to an obligation to be fulfilled to your guild. And unfortunately, we tanks are often the sort of person who finds it hard to say no to people. I personally have learned to say no somewhat, but for the record I still feel like an ass whenever someone asks for a tank in guild, I'm on Kirari, and I just stay silent, selfishly spamming the LFG channel for a heroic run for badges to buy his new dagger, wishing the damned tanks would come online.

7: Repair bills. I don't know if this is an actual reason or not. I personally am not fazed in the slightest by my repair bills any more (Even a deathless H-SH run will cost me the better part of ten gold for repairs), but maybe the plate wearers are more sensitive to it, since they dont have a catform to earn the money back with. The fact is, your tank is paying more in repair bills than you. I'll almost gurantee it. Unless you're in T5 epics, your tank is in dungeon greens, and you're wiping like its going out of style, your tank is taking the brunt of the repair costs on himself, simply because every time they get hit, there is a set chance for one of their items to incur a durability hit (and every time they block, their shield has an additional chance to take a point of damage, hence why Jasminne carries two shields with her at all times). And while that 40 gold repair the prot warrior just racked up is just a couple primals to a DPSer, for him to get those primals takes him at least twice as long as you take due to his spec and gear.


Just some points to ponder the next time there are 20 DPSers, 3 healers, and (maybe) 1 tank online in your guild. Continue reading 'Tank Shortage: Do You Believe?'

The Five Worst Raid Bosses Ever

So, I was fighting my number one least favorite boss in Karazhan last night on my hunter, and it got me thinking. . . I really dont want to write a blog article tomorrow. Uh, er, I mean how many bosses in WoW do I truly hate? As it turns out, there are quite a number of them, but most are from vanilla WoW (and are on the list due to the same mechanic, see #3 below). And so, I bring to you what are, in my opinion, the five (or so) worst boss encounters I've had the "pleasure" of fighting in WoW.

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#5: Hydross the Unstable
I actually kind of enjoyed this boss fight, at least once everybody in guild got the hang of it. My issue isn't with the actual mechanics and coreography of the fight, but with the gearing required to fight it. I remember, back when TBC was in beta, reading from one blue poster or another that WoW was going to veer away from the resist fight model, because collecting resist gear wasn't fun. And, for the MOST part, they came through. . . unless you're a tank.

Tanks, the people who already carry 2-3 sets of gear with them at all times (DPS gear, and healing gear for non-warriors), are forced to collect resistance sets still, and unlike Molten Core in days gone by, that gear is used for maybe 1-2 fights, making it even MORE annoying to collect. Sure, you dont need to outfit the whole raid these days, but why is it always the tanks that have to collect the extra set (Even when its a warlock on Leo, or a mage on Maulgar, its a tank, but at least its another class).

But even THAT isn't my beef with this fight. Fine, make me collect resist gear. . . but MAKE THE RESIST GEAR AVAILABLE! Druid resist tanking gear has three unifying attributes: Its green, purchased from the auction house, and has "of XXXXXX protection" as part of its name. Warriors and paladins get all sorts of crafted epic resist gear they can collect to make a set. Druids can wear the rings and neck pieces of . . . oh, wait, no we can't, because we NEED our rings and neck piece to maintain uncrittability, and crafted items like The Frozen Eye have zero defense on them. The only saving grace of this fight is that, as an offtank dealing with adds, you don't actually need the resist gear at all if you regular tanking gear is halfway decent (shhh, don't tell my raid leader *cough*)

#4: Prince Malchezaar
You face not Malchezaar alone, but the Random Number Generator he commands! I bet you all thought this was going to be the #1 spot, didn't you? Well, he's not. The fact of the matter is, this is NOT supposed to be a "stand in one spot and DPS" fight, its supposed to be a mobility fight. But alas, folks have found that its easier to park your tank against a wall, your ranged folks in a safe nook, and take your chances with the RNG instead. And a boss fight whose success or failure is based more on the roll of a die than on the skill of the raiders is bad design (which should be corrected by shoring up those "safe spots" IMO, making the fight harder, but I think more fun once people got used to it).

For many people, Malchezaar is right up there on the list of most hated mobs, because he seems to always drop those two infernals that totally mess up the magical "Stand and deliver" positioning. But I've had some excellent experiences where exactly that happened, but I had a crack team with me, and we moved to a new position, and kept moving throughout the fight (IE: We were forced to do the fight the right way). It helps that I have feral charge to reset my position after shadow novas, I'll admit, but hey, I dont mind having an occasional raid fight that doesn't heavily favor warrior tanks *snerk*.

#3: Lucifron
Lucy is just one of many in a long line of "decurse spam" fights that I find absolutely retarded. A boss that casts a nasty debuff is perfectly fine. . . a boss that casts that nasty debuff on all 40 members of a raid, every 20 seconds, is just annoying. These fights might have been enjoyable for those who didn't have any sort of cleansing ability, but for the rest of us, it was an annoying, repetitive chore.

#2: Shazzrah
Shazz was another one of those spam decurse fights, but with an extra delight that puts him head and shoulders above the rest. You see, he liked spamming this massive arcane explosion that would absolutely obliterate anyone other than the tank trying to be in melee range of him. So everybody, including the rogues and all the warriors but the main tank, would set up for the fight by making a big semicircle around a parked imp at max range. And the only reason anyone ever went inside that circle was because they were the tank, or they were bringing Shaz back to the tank after he randomly teleported to them.

For those of you who think fights like Maulgar and Prince are melee unfriendly, try spending an entire fight as a warrior/rogue shooting arrows, bullets, and throwing daggers at a boss. Alas, it could be worse. . . you could be decursing!

#1: Big Bad Wolf
Yeah, go ahead and laugh. I HATE BBW (No, not THOSE BBW *cough*). Hate him with a passion. Supposedly, you're supposed to be able to keep ahead of him when turned into Little Red Riding Hood by running around the stage scenery in a tight circle, as he's supposed to get hung up on the stuff. I've watched people do it successfully. I've done the same exact damn thing they did. I've died every time I don the hood.

Whats really annoying, though, is that he seems to have this annoying tendency to make the tank big bad the moment he's pulled. And since the tank has no armor, he can't just stand there and build threat, he has to run away too, making sure that, at the very least, the healers are above his threat and will get beaten to a pulp the minute he breaks out. Or he picks on all of the healers, systematically splattering them all (I think I've seen a healer survive it once, but most of the time they seem to be too focused on health bars to notice the raid warnings and such).

When I first went to Karazhan, I was told we were lucky, because our first couple of Opera events were the Wolf, and he was the "easiest" of the opera events. Frankly, I'll take a harder event that kills me because I made mistakes over an "easy" event that splatters me just because I cant get a mob to bug out on scenery. Continue reading 'The Five Worst Raid Bosses Ever'

What is a Hybrid; or, Why its called Living Shard of the Wildheart

First off, just let me say this: I am in FULL support of my healing brethren in their fight against the Lifebloom nerf. Having gone through similar PvP-induced raid nerfs in the 2.0.10 patch nearly a year ago, I hope that Blizzard wakes up and finds some way to prevent this nerf from totally screwing over the raiders (Like they did for feral tanks by giving Mangle a threat multiplier, and making lacerate generate threat against bleed-immune mobs). However, I feel there is a TON of coverage of the LB nerf from Resto4Life and the rest of the druid blogging community, so I'm going to leave the actual discussion about it to them. Keep on fighting the good fight!

Instead, what I want to talk about today, at least initially, is the concept of a hybrid, and how it fits (or doesn't fit) with the druid class. At first look, druids are THE hybrid class of the game. We're the only class that can perform all 4 of the primary roles found in the game: Tanking, Healing, Melee DPS, and Ranged DPS. By comparison, warriors can tank and do melee DPS, priests can heal and do ranged DPS, Paladins can tank, do melee DPS, and heal, and shamans can heal, do melee DPS, and do ranged DPS. However, while these classes, to varying degrees, are in fact hybrids, the individual MEMBERS of these classes, I contend, are not. In my opinion, to consider a character hybrid, they have to be equally good in multiple roles at the same time, something that no class can do without at least a change of gear, and for most roles a change of spec, as well.

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Ask any responsible hybrid class player how many sets of gear they have, and they will have at least 2 full sets of gear: A tanking or healing set, and a DPS set of some sort (for grinding if nothing else). If they only have one set of gear, they're either not playing their class to the fullest, or they're still levelling up (and even when levelling, many hybrids carry multiple gear sets for instance running). I personally have three primary gear sets that I carry with me at all times: my tanking gear, my cat DPS gear (which only shares a few pieces with the tanking gear, namely my T4 gear), and my healing gear. I also maintain a set of caster DPS gear, and have plenty of other gear for use on specific encounters (Resist gear, various trinkets, high stam set, etcetera).

If I were a hybrid, I would have one set of gear, and that set would perform equally well in all roles. Sure, I could put together a set of gear that is, in fact, hybridized, but I would never wear it. When asked to a group, a hybrid is asked to perform a specific role, be it tanking, healing, or DPS, and that one role alone. Sure, there may be times when a hybrid is asked to perform a secondary role, such as offtanking or offhealing, but in those cases, they know of it beforehand, and change into gear appropriate for that new role. We dont wear hybrid sets, because while a hybrid set can let us perform better in roles we may fill 10% of the time, its at a huge cost to our effictiveness the other 90% of the time.

Now, look at any hybrid player's spec. See many 20/20/21 specs out there? Didn't think so. Thats because, while an individual class may be capable of performing multiple roles, since a person will only be filling one role at a time, it is best to complement that one role with a spec which matches the role. A priest who heals most of the time is going to avoid the shadow tree in favor of holy and discipline. A druid who sits back and casts balance spells isn't going to go into the feral tree, they're going to dig deep in balance, and then pick up some complimentary caster talents in the restoration tree to round it out. This is why when people are looking to fill out a group, they dont generally ask "Want to heal our Blood Furnace run?" Instead, they ask "Are you Resto?" or "Are you Holy?". Sure, its possible to have a feral druid or shadow priest heal your run well, but your odds are MUCH better if you get a tree or a holy priest, and with how bad PuGs usually are, group leaders want to stack the deck in their favor as much as possible.

Why do I bring all of this up? Well, this past saturday, Prophecy hit another milestone, killing off Hydross the Unstable in our third night of attempts. And sure enough, to commemorate our victory, Hydross dropped what is known to be one of the crappiest druid items known to man: the Living Root of the Wildheart. A trinket that at first looks like it might be a decent item, giving the wearer 4070 armor in bearform, 64 strength in cat form, 209 spell damage in moonkin form, 326 healing in tree form, or 175 damage/heal in caster form. But when you realize that those bonuses only happen when the trinket "procs", and that the trinket has a whopping 3% proc rate, you start to realize that in any one form, the thing is pretty crappy and unreliable.

The one useful role this trinket could potentially play is as a hybrid item. However, as we already mentioned, hybrid gear isn't really useful, as a druid will always wear the appropriate gear for every fight, and there really aren't many fights where druids will be asked to fill a hybrid role (Ironically, the Hydross fight itself was one such occasion, as I tanked adds until they were dead, then shifted to cat form to contribute more DPS on hydross until the next add phase . . . too bad the armor from the living root is completely useless against elemental damage, eh?). And even if you WERE to switch roles a lot, that would just increase the chance that the root would proc 4000 armor right before you switch to caster form to do some offhealing. . . wasting the proc entirely. And of course, procs at the end of a fight would be wasted as well.

Ultimately, there are some people who claim that the proc rate of the root, while small, keeps the buff up enough to make the trinket worthwhile to a single form. I find this hard to believe, though. For example, lets say you're a tree druid spamming lifebloom at every single cooldown. This means that for every cast of lifebloom, the buff will be up if any one of the last 9 casts procced the trinket (10 if you have absolute perfect timing, maybe). This gives your odds of the buff being up at just shy of 24% (not 27%, since double procs simply refresh the timer instead of giving you twice the buff). Averaging out the value of the trinket, then, we get .24*326 = 78.24 bonus healing on average.

Looking at the other forms, we get 50.16 spelldamage in moonkin form when spamming wrath and moonfire (Same math as lifebloom spam), 28.16 strength in cat form (assuming 3 auto attacks and one special every 3 seconds, 44% uptime), 1493 armor in bear form (6 autoattacks/mauls and 10 instant attacks every 15 seconds, 36.7% uptime), and 42 damage/healing in caster form for what its worth.

When you look at the averages here, the trinket looks *okay*, but remember, we're assuming absolute maximum effect, while reality will be much lower on 95% of situations. For example, I'd only get about half benefit from the armor in bearform due to the fact that I'm only about 2k armor shy of the cap, and if we're assuming an average 750 armor, I'll equip my Mark of Tyranny and get just over 1k armor all the time instead. And my hat goes off to the moonkin who can sustain wrath spam through an entire bossfight (though if you're that advanced, why are you using this trinket for 50 spelldamage, when Darkmoon Card: Crusade gives you 80, and Icon of the Silver Crescent gives you an average of 69, and the proc is useable as controlled burst damage. And that 78 bonus healing in tree form? Pick up an Essence of the Martyr for an average of 134 bonus healing (again, with a controllable proc for burst healing) from badges, and then tell me the 78 from the Root, under ideal circumstances mind you, is worthy of a T5 item drop.

So, the trinket is subpar for single role druids, and while it may be better for druids in hybrid gear, with a hybrid spec, pulling a hybrid role, those druids dont exist in raiding. On the plus side, the LRotWH isn't alone in the unwanted hybrid gear club, though it is the shining star of the group. See also: Idol of the Raven Goddess (Which, despite its hybrid nature, can actually be decent in a 25-man raid setting when a full group can make use of a druid's auras. . . alas, by that time you have better idols though), Dungeon Set 3 (Properly socketed, and with its 2-piece bonus, at least somewhat decent as stop-gap healing gear), and the old hybrid epics from heroic dungeons that were visually the rest of the Dungeon Set (oh, but blizzard changed those into good feral pieces, since nobody used the hybrid gear).

Oh, and I forgot to mention. . . I won the trinket. Not that I plan on using the thing, I just hate to see items from a guild first kill get sharded. In my bank it will sit, at least for now. Eventually, either the trinket will be made useful like what happened with the heroic epics, or, much more likely, I'll get sick of having no bank space and vendor it, making it infinitely more useful than it was by using the proceeds to buy a stack of Mad Alchemist Potions for myself. Continue reading 'What is a Hybrid; or, Why its called Living Shard of the Wildheart'

Badge Reward Epics: Do Not Want!

So, information is starting to come out regarding the 2.4 patch. We already knew about the new 5- and 25-man instances we were getting. We had heard there was going to be a new legendary bow (Seriously though, blizzard, whats with the utter lack of legendaries in Outland?). And now, the floodgates are opening, and we're getting all sorts of information on specifics, Sunwell opening quests, class changes, 8-piece extensions on T6, Tier 6 quality badge rewards. . .

T6 badge rewards? Pardon me while I die a little inside. . . thats just not right.

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Now, first off, let me get one thing out in the open here. I could care less about what Joe Schmoe of Kokomo has for gear. People used to get all upset because they couldn't get epics in what has come to be called Vanilla WoW without either raiding with 39 of their closest friends, or PvPing for 30 hours a day to climb the ladder. Blizzard listened, and gave more casual players avenues for acquiring epic gear: heroic instances, badge rewards, crafted epics, a completely revamped PvP point system, and arena. Lets face it, in the Outland, purple is the new blue. But whatever, color is color.

Fast forward to 2.3. Among the changes to the game are new badge rewards, equivalent to the gear that drops in The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern. Honestly, I probably would have had the same issue with this that I do with the upcoming badge rewards, being much higher quality (T5) than what the content one runs to get it would dictate (Karazhan and Heroic Instances). At the time, though, I was distracted by the fact that two pieces of new badge gear would effectively "plug" two gaping holes in feral tank itemization: Bracers and Idol.

So, what do I care, anyhow? I already said I dont care what other people are wearing, and this new gear doesn't hurt anybody in any way, only gives us new opportunities. Well, first of all, I consider each piece of my gear to be a mark of accomplishment. I wear my T4 Helm with pride, knowing that I earned it by being there for my guild's first ever Prince Malchezaar kill. A'dal's Signet of Defense sits proudly on my finger as a testament to my guild's first slaying of the pit lord Magtheridon, shutting down the source of the Fel Orc menace. My Waistguard of the Great Beast, on the other hand, is simply evidence that I found the time to farm Karazhan for badges for a few weeks. Whoopy doo.

Which brings me to my second reason: expectation. I know that right now, my gear is in great shape for tanking. In fact, other than my T4 chest (which I may never get to see, since I've only been able to attend that one Mags raid due to my schedule), I really dont have any upgrades to look forward to in the forseeable future. So you would think that I'd love to have new gear to work toward in 2.4, right? Wrong. Guess what, its NOT about the gear for me, thats not why I raid. I raid because I love the CHALLENGE of it, not the purple color of my gear text (which, as I already noted, can be gotten by pretty much anybody nowadays). Farming heroics and Karazhan for badges of justice is NOT a challenge to me, and it frankly pisses me off that I now will be expected to continue farming these places to replace my hard earned raid drops with better pieces that even somebody who can only run Heroic Slave Pens and Underbog can get.

Ok, so maybe I DO care about what other people are wearing, just a little bit *shrug*

Third, lets look at an interesting fact: casual content (Which I define as 5-man instances and Karazhan) can be done just fine with casual gear (Which I define as anything that does not come from a raid instance, raid reputation reward, or badge reward other than those TBC released with). The only people that need T5 and T6 quality items are guilds DOING T5 and T6 difficulty content. Quite frankly, having high-quality gear takes all the challenge out of the casual content anyhow. I tank most heroic runs and much of Karazhan in my kitty DPS gear just to make them go faster, for God's sake, I dont need full T6 to run Heroic Underbog! If people are having a hard time doing content without uber gear, thats GREAT, that gives them a challenge, something to work toward. Kind of like how raiders have to work hard to down new bosses, fancy that! And if they really, truly, want to do the equivalent of cheating by acquiring gear beyond what the instance was designed around, go ahead and farm honor/arena points and buy PvP rewards (My disgust for the fact that I should also force myself to do arena since my S3 gear is worlds better than my current raiding epics is another topic altogether.

I've heard some people put forward the thought that this gear can allow people to "catch up" to guilds raiding higher end content. And to a degree, they're right. A person will be able to farm badges and get T5/T6 quality gear to catch up with those who have loot from SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT. There are two problems with this line of thinking, though, which can be summed up in one of my very abbreviated philosophies: Skill > Spec >> Gear. Sure, you can get BT quality gear from badges, but when you really look closely at the difference between T4 and T6 gear, the difference isn't THAT great. A person in full Karazhan and Heroic gear isn't going to be topping the charts on Illidan, but I bet that if they had a decent amount of skill to back up that gear, they would make at least a respectable showing.

And more importantly, even if a level 70 could farm heroics for a full set of BT quality epics, I gurantee you that person, unless they have another raiding character of the same class and spec, is going to be extremely lacking in the skills you need for high end raiding. Whether you realize it or not, you learn valuable raiding skills while killing off Curator's sparks, clicking on Magtheridon's cubes, and dodging Void Reaver's balls *chortle*. Guilds dont take weeks learning a new boss because they're waiting to get enough gear upgrades, they take weeks because they need to learn the ins and outs of the fight, develop strategies, hone reflexes, and generally get better at the game.

If I had to sum up why I dont like the idea of T6 badge rewards in one short sentence, it would be this: Putting high-end raid quality rewards in G'erasMart helps least those who need the items the most, and helps most those who dont even need the items. Continue reading 'Badge Reward Epics: Do Not Want!'

Why I Wish I Couldn't DPS

WARNING: This is a long, whiny rant. The contents of said rant can easily be construed to be anti-prot-tank. I assure you, however, that I have great respect for my plate-wearing compatriots, and do not wish any of them ill will. I'm just jealous.

The relationship between Protection Warriors, Protection Paladins, and Feral Druids is an interesting dynamic. It seems that we all have our little, or not so little, reasons to be jealous of one another: Warriors tend to wish they had more of the AoE threat generation of Druids and Paladins, Druids tend to be jealous of the plate tanks' lack of a cap on their primary defense stats and ability to become crush immune, and Paladins tend to wish they had better mana regeneration while offtanking. But I personally am jealous about something very odd, something you wouldn't even think was a problem. Something that has irritated me for a while, and I'm sure is at least partially rooted in my own guild's culture, which I admittedly was a large part in the creation of.

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I'm jealous of the fact that Plate tanks' specs dont afford them the ability to deal good damage with a simple change of spec. Funny, especially considering all the flack we feral druids caught when the feral tree was "streamlined", and the division between a bear spec and a cat spec was basically reduced to . . . well, nothing at all.

Why in the world would the ability to do damage be considered a disadvantage? Well, essentially, its a watered down version of the Pre-Burning Crusade mindset of "If you have a heal button, you're a healer". Except these days, while feral druids aren't often expected to heal (At least in my guild), we ARE expected to switch to a DPS role whenever we aren't needed as a tank. And we're expected to be pretty good at it, too.

Now, don't misread this. I can do DPS. I can do pretty good DPS, as a matter of fact. I just dont particularly WANT to.

Now, I'm in an awkward position to be making this complaint. My guild loves my tanking. Many DPSers often tell me that, when I'm tanking a run for them, they get to basically ignore the threat meter and go balls-to-the-wall. And many healers have told me that I'm their favorite tank to heal, because its so easy (by which I assume they mean my personal stat balance makes me easy to heal, though I suppose it could also refer to my ability to keep the DPSers from being hit). And I know that, short of the few raid encounters out there that CANT be maintanked by a Druid (Reliquary of Souls, Illidan, etc), my guild wouldn't hesitate for a moment to put me in the main tank spot for any of our raids.

. . . unless our main tank is there. Now, we dont OFFICIALLY have a main tank, but everybody knows that 99% of the time, if this particular warrior is in a raid, he'll be the one on the named boss, and he'll be the one tanking Skull on trash. He's our best geared and best skilled warrior, and has tanked guild first after guild first after guild first for us. And by all means, he certainly deserves the credit he gets for what he does for our guild. But I really envy him, because I could never aspire to have that primo spot due to my class' mechanics.

The heart of the issue is this: Raids need multiple tanks. Two for 10-man raids, and 3-5 for the 25-mans. Bosses, on the other hand, tend to require one primary tank, and maybe a couple of additional tanks to handle odd jobs like picking up adds during Lurker's Submerge or eating Hateful Strikes on Gruul. Every once in a while, the "Extra" tanks get to do a slightly higher profile job, like tanking adds on Maulgar, or tanking Moroes when the main tank gets gouged. And even more rare are the occasions where you actually need two main tanks, like on Bear Boss or Netherspite.

So, because of this discrepancy between trash and bosses in terms of needed tanks, its natural that some will need to step aside and perform other roles on boss fights. And when it comes down to it, Prot Warriors are the worst option for who to pull. Not necessarily because they're the best tanks, but because they're the worst at filling in other roles. Relegating a Protection Warrior to a DPS role is like . . . well, I can't even come up with a good metaphor right now, but the general rule is Prot warriors do horrible DPS. Prot pallys aren't all that good at it, either.

So, the obvious choice becomes for the feral druids to strap on their kitty gear and shred the backside of the boss. After all, not only do bear tanks have a good talent selection for doing DPS, they also have the advantage of having the gear for it, since most druid tanking gear is actually hybrid tank/DPS stuff with strength and agility galore. Faced with the option of having a plate tank doing halfassed DPS while the feral druid tanks, or having the feral druid doing 80-90% of a full-on DPSer's DPS while the plate tank tanks, its pretty obvious which is better in terms of overall success of the encounter.

And even if you DO need the druid to tank on an encounter, often fights involve killing off adds which, once dead, allow the tanks for those adds to switch from a tanking role to a DPS role. Once again, the feral druid ends up relinquishing their tanking role soon, tanking the first or second add to die so that they can be freed up to switch to cat form and do DPS. After all, like I just noted, a feral druid's tanking gear is often 1/2 to 2/3 DPS gear as well, while a paladin or warrior is going to be stuck in tanking-focused gear trying to contribute damage. And again, you want a warrior to be on that last mob to die, because even paladins, while stuck in bad gear for it, can at least equip their healing weapon and shield and contribute that way if healing starts to wane.

So basically, what happens is that warriors, while no longer the only accepted tanking class, maintain the status quo of being the best tanks, but not necessarily because they ARE the best, instead getting the coveted main tank position because they lack the utility and flexibility to perform other roles.

And now, for the part where I futilely call for blizzard to change the mechanics of the game. First of all, make it possible for Prot warriors and Pallys to do decent DPS with their specs. For that matter, let ALL specs of all classes do reasonably good, though not top-notch, damage. And second, do what you did for the healers recently, and make defensive stats on plate gear also somehow boost the ability of the plate wearer to do damage. That way, maybe feral druids like me wont feel so bad about asking to get our share of the limelight every once in a while.

Yeah, go figure, I write a long article detailing how I envy warriors, and then I conclude it by wishing for BUFFS for them. Did I mention I'm insane?

Continue reading 'Why I Wish I Couldn't DPS'

Ring Ring Ring . . . Bananashoulders!

Siha, of Banana Shoulders, recently posted the first in what is likely to be a regular series of questions for bloggers such as myself. Be on the lookout for other Blog Azeroth patrons putting up their responses to the question:

Q: What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

Well, there are a few different reasons I play a Druid. . .

Druid was my first class -- Even before I played the game, I was doing my research on it. Before WoW, I had always played casters of some variety. But I was starting to get curious about more melee-oriented roles. Rather than make multiple characters to experiment with, I figured I would go with one of the game's hybrid classes and experience everything at once. Since I wanted to try both tanking and melee DPS, my options were either Paladin or Druid. Two factors tipped the scales toward Druid: I had an "RP family member" who would fit very well as a druid (though Jasminne was also an obvious choice for paladin), and more importantly, the literature I was reading tended to treat Paladins as a sort of easymode class. Not saying what I was reading was CORRECT, but I like a challenge, so I went with Druid.

(Feral) Druids dont have downtime -- One of the things I absolutely HATED about other games was the immense downtime inherent in most systems. Lineage II was the absolute worst in this regard, with special mention going to casters in D&D Online (where mana was so restricted that many fights DURING A RUN were effectively downtime since you couldn't hit a damn thing with weapons unless you were super-specialized in their use, and wanted to save as much MP as possible for the big fights). I have never had any downtime whatsoever as a feral druid, though. If my health runs low, I pop out, heal myself, and keep going. And if my mana runs out. . . LOL, yeah, I think thats happened like 3 times while soloing, and I just innervate myself.

Tree healing is fun! -- Believe it or not, I'm one of those nuts that actually enjoys healing (But only if I have a tank who knows how to keep mobs off of me). I dont think I've ever complained about having to heal a run, and have always tried to keep a decent healing set (Which I carry with me at ALL times, even when I'm soloing, you never know). When the expansion came out, and I got Lifebloom, things got a little bit more fun, tossing out heals on a 7-second fuse. Then the Lifebloom +heal change hit, and druid healing became a blast. Honestly, while I'm levelling my paladin to be a healer, I think I'd almost rather respec Surania to healing (She has damn good gear for a feral, 1500 +heal and 150 mana/5 while casting) and have the paladin be the tank. Almost.

I like big numbers. -- Which is not to say that I particularly care about the biggest crits ever, I never really got that, since its all about DPS in PvE, not the single big hits, leave that for the PvP arenas. But when I see 20k health (and then realize its actually low), 35k armor, and over 50% dodge when fully raid buffed for tanking, it makes me all giddy inside. To the point that I guess I've pissed some people off in the past when bragging about gear upgrades (Mind you, I've only gotten one signifigant upgrade recently, the ring from Mags' head).

The Swiss-Army-Knife effect. -- This is actually a mixed blessing. I love being able to do whatever the raid needs me to do, and to be able to (to a good extent) switch between roles at a moment's notice. The problem is, I never really wanted to be a melee DPS type. Sure, I levelled feral, but I never really got all that interested in LOLkittyMewMew for groups. That was reinforced, pre-1.12, by the fact that there used to be a definite split between the feral tanking spec (11/33/7 baybee) and feral DPS spec. Druids specced for tanking did pretty piss-poor DPS, and druids specced for cat DPS weren't terribly great at tanking. Not that druid tanking and DPS was all that great in general, mind you. Anyhow, with the streamlining of the feral tree, I was all but forced to embrace my inner kitty and learn the ways of The Shredder. And while I've started to enjoy cat DPS a bit, I still much prefer tanking or healing.

The one thing I truly HATE. -- Switching gears for a second, perhaps to an idea for the next installment of this blogging exercise, is the one thing I truly hate about being a bear. And that is the #^($ing armor cap. Seriously, blizzard, just take it out already, or at LEAST balance the game around never being able to reach it under normal circumstances. Armor is our primary scaling stat as a feral tank, and while I've already covered the fact that diminishing returns is a big pile of crap, it doesn't scale exponentially like dodge, either. Honestly, its not like we'd be able to get very far past the cap anyhow. In fact, just increasing the cap to 80% increases the cap on the actual armor number to 47,840! Good luck getting that without some hardcore, short-lived buffs *coughinspirationcough*

/prowl
Continue reading 'Ring Ring Ring . . . Bananashoulders!'

What People Fail to Realize About Guilds and their Leaders

First off, let me just state that this is by no means intended as some sort of attack on my guild's membership. I love Prophecy. . . hell, I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did as the GM if I didn't. Some of this may be inspired by my experiences leading Prophecy, but most of it is more generic, and spans all the guilds in all the games I've played. I just wanted to make public some of the things I think to myself when the fecal matter meets the rotary air circulation device.

• Guild leaders pay the same 15 bucks a month you do: Believe it or not, Guildmasters dont get paid 6-figure incomes to fulfil their role. In fact, they pay just as much for the privelege of logging in each day as you do. You are not one of their customers, and as such you shouldn't expect 24x7 service from them, even if they're logged in. Hell, even the people who ARE paid to moderate the game have response times ranging from bad to abysmal!
  
  
• There is no such thing as a degree in guild leadership: There isn't even so much as a brochure handed out to the new guys. At most, we have an online community to draw from for ideas on how to best lead our guild members, though more often than not, the stories you find online only deal with what NOT to do. Don't expect your leaders to have the magical formula that makes everything run perfectly. I assure you, if it existed, somebody WOULD be making that 6-figure income selling it!
  
  
• Guild leaders are not psychic: Last time I looked, guilds had leaders with names like Surania, Cheetara, or Killerets. Rarely will you find Kreskin, Geller, or Cleo in the upper ranks. What this means is, if you have a problem with something going on in the guild, and its not being addressed, thats probably because the folks in charge don't actually know about your problem. Voice your concerns, and dont be surprised if it takes a few tries to actually get the problem addressed, as your voice is one among many.
  
  
• Guild leaders are not peer mediators: Often times, when somebody has an issue directly related to their interactions with a fellow guild member, their first reaction is to bring up their issues with the guild leader. And while sometimes that may be an appropriate first step (Usually when the problem is something like sexual harassment or general asshattery), small interpersonal problems should NOT require a third party to be settled. Have a problem with the shadow priest playing favorites when he makes groups for the daily heroic? Talk to HIM about it! Upset because that cute shamaness you've had your eyes on is now dating your best friend? Thats nice, you expect me to do what, exactly? You handle your personal problems, and leave the Guildmaster to deal with the problems that affect the guild as a whole.
  
  
• The stress of leadership grows exponentially with guild size: Small guilds, like what Prophecy started out as, are relatively easy to lead. Everybody knows everybody else pretty well, and everybody can have a say in guild affairs. Raiding-sized guilds, on the other hand, keep Bristol-Myers Squibb in business. Thus, the larger your guild is, the more stressed out you can count on your guild leaders being. Try to be understanding if they occasionally get snippy, reclusive, or whatever, because sometimes it takes a lot of effort just to log in to a guild full of people who need you.
  
  
• Its just a game: This one is for my fellow leaders. If the mere idea of logging in gives you a migraine, don't. If this is you, cancel your account before you give yourself a heart attack. The worst thing you can do for yourself is to start taking WoW too seriously, and to actually stress yourself out over it. You're paying 15 bucks a month to have fun, not to have a second career.

In conclusion, I'd just like to give a big round of applause for my comrades-at-arms from all guilds. I know all too well what running a guild entails, and I wouldn't wish it on anybody!

Continue reading 'What People Fail to Realize About Guilds and their Leaders'

Looking for Group == Looking for Repair Bills

To your right, you will see the makings of your average. . . or perhaps even ABOVE average, PuG run on Steamwheedle Cartel. I'm pretty sure the guy on the left is a 20/21/20 Druid, and the one on the right is a mage wearing a set of matched gray clothes. Toss in a Shaman who swears he can tank everything, A warlock who cant stop tossing Seed of Crowd-Control-Breaking, and just for the sake of headaches, I'll throw myself in there on my hunter. Oh, wait, actually, I think I had that exact group last thursday.

It amazes me how BAD people can be at playing their class, it really does. Yesterday I, on my trap-focused (Read: Not DPS optimized) hunter, Kibler, I ran a regular mechanaar and ended up doing over 48% of the total damage for the group. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the SWStats screen at the end. The TANK did nearly 20%. I think our other DPSers could be summed up in one brilliant comment by the warlock in the group: "I was wanding because I want to conserve my mana".

Dear Warlock,

It has recently come to the attention of the Shadow Council of Dalaran that you are in dire need of De-noobification. In order to rectify your current situation, we must now insist that you follow one of two pre-selected protocols:

1) Visit your local Warlock Training Officer (WTO) and attend the 5-second training course on Life Tap. Upon conclusion of this training, please place your new Life Tap button in a convenient place on your hotbar, and learn to love it.

2) Send the aforementioned WTO your Shadow Council membership card and badge in the mail (or, if desired, we also accept Imp Deliveries). Upon surrender of your membership paraphernalia, please log out, delete your character, and cancel your World of Warcraft account.

We apologize for this inconvenience, however, we cant afford to have incompetent warlocks representing us.


Twistedly Yours,
The DSC

Its more than just incompetence on the server, though (And dont get me wrong, there are also plenty of COMPETENT players on the server, but they're rare to find outside of guild runs). My biggest beef as of late is the insane lack of TANKS on our server. Any tanks, even the incompetent ones. I estimate I've sat on the LFG channel for 60 hours since Kibler hit 70. In that time, I've successfully run TWO instance runs. I've gotten probably 20 groups, but all of them end up the same:

[4. LookingForGroup] [Kibler]: LF1M Tank for _______, PST

Now, I blame this partially on Blizzard for changing class balance every time they change group size (20% tanks for 5-man and 10-man instances, but only 8-12% tanks in 25-man raids). But what really boggles my mind is that people dont try to fill in the need. Hell, even the other FERAL druids wont tank on this server, they all claim "Oh, I'm cat specced, I cant tank". Bull shit, cat spec hasn't existed since 1.12, I should know, I was there as a Bear-spec (11/33/7, or as I called it "1 1337 Bear Tank"). All of the paladins on the server are Holy, most of the druids are Resto (Amazingly, no shortage of healers for PuGs. . . just for Raids), and all of the warriors are Arms/Fury. But alas, as I already mentioned, PuGgers are idiots on this server, and thus probably cant wrap their brains around the idea of respeccing in order to gear up faster. So, we all sit in LFG, waiting to jump on some poor, unsuspecting tank that wanders in.

Actually, a couple days ago, I decided to be just that sucker on Surania, after giving up all hope of ever getting a group on Kibler. And doing so made me realize why I never noticed the poor PuG quality before: A good tank can cancel out a LOT of bad play by the rest of the group. My favorite moment from that day was at Warlord Kalithresh in The Steamvault (nonheroic). I had been tanking the instance in my DPS gear (In which I still have 25k armor, 12k health, and my dodge jumps up to about 50% unbuffed), but decided to switch to my tanking gear for the last fight. Turns out it was the best decision I ever made, the DPS failed to kill the first fishtank in time, causing the boss to enrage early in the fight. Which wouldnt have been a problem, except I guess the healer had gotten bored and decided to DPS the boss a bit. . . while he had his spellshield up. . . at the same time. Oh, look, a big red boss, and there's an angel in the corner over there.

Amazingly enough, I managed to keep myself vertical long enough for us to kill off the second fishtank and the boss. I owe my life to a combination of BearVasion,Frenzied Regeneration (One of the few times I think it actually made a difference), Improved LotP procs, and everybody's favorite toy from the 2.3 patch, my potion/CCF macro. I think I ended the fight with about 1.5k health, and about 4 amazed group members. That was a fight I wont forget for a long time, I think, ranks right up there with the time I tanked Magmadar in my MC healing set (After both warrior tanks went down) way back when.

The kicker? Despite the headaches they cause, I still recommend EVERYBODY, regardless of gear and experience level, go on a PuG run at least once a month. PuGs offer a unique challenge, especially the bad ones. They make you think about what you can do to survive, or at least minimize your losses, when faced with an unexpected challenge. The skills you learn in PuGs are the skills you use in fights like Prince Malchezaar, or High King Maulgar, how to deal with it when the shit hits the fan and your backs are up against a wall. And if you have these skills, you can pull off some incredible saves.
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