The Basic Classes of Warcraft Need Help

Zell over at Unwavering Sentinel made a post yesterday about how ghostcrawler mentioned that hunters were on the block for a make over yet his class, the warrior, which is in desperate need of a make over remains for the most part untouched and unspoken about.

As a hunter main of course I must take to the defense of my class and why we are deserving of a revamp but I can not argue anything he has to say about warriors.  He is 100% correct in saying that they are in a very bad place.  I play a warrior as an alt, I have tanked on my warrior, I used to play with perhaps the greatest warrior tank I have ever seen in the game, I know people that have been warriors since vanilla that have quit because of warriors being basically forgotten.  So it is not like I am oblivious to warrior concerns.

The point is, why do they just have to do hunters, why can they not do all the basic classes of warcraft.  While it is just an opinion I believe the basic classes of warcraft to be (tank) warrior, (healer) priest, (melee) rogue, (caster) mage and (ranged) hunter.

If you look at that list three of those five are the most often talked about as in need of a revamp.  Actually it seems like the only three classes we hear talked about lately as in need of a revamp are those three, the hunter, the rogue and the warrior.

Zell goes on to use some charts made by Cynwise as proof that hunters should not get any attention as they are the most, or one of the most, popular class in the game.  He seems to discount that popularity and actual usage mean two completely different things.

Budwiser is the number one selling beer in the united states and it is quite possibly one of the worst beers on the market.  The reason it is the number one selling beer is advertising, ease of access as every single store carries it, and it is usually a cheaper price than the better beers.  Being number one does not mean it is in a good place.

That is exactly were hunter are.  They are easy to level, killer in low level battle grounds, great gathers which makes them ideal for secondary profession alts, good soloers, and over all a decent class.  The are easy to play but hard to master, however you can get very far with that easy to play zone and that is why some people like them.

Also, these facts are all well known which basically means advertising makes them popular, just like budwiser.  So when someone wants to make a profession alt, a double gather, or something easy to just play around with and maybe solo once in a while, hunters are a very popular choice.  But like budwiser, just because they are number one, does not mean they are good.

I can go over the issues with rogues and warriors that can show they deserve some class spanning changes but over all I would be in a much better place to go over why I believe hunters are in need of something sweeping as a class as I play them more often so I am more versed in the ins and outs of them.

1) Bad Scaling:

Hunters usually start off a tier in an okay place but as the tier goes on and people get gear they start to fall in the ranking because they do not scale well with secondary stats.  A redesign of how secondary stats are handled for hunters to better smooth out their place in the standings so they do not dip as gear levels go up would be a nice start in the redesign of hunters.

When Patch 5.4 came out if you did an ordos group you would see the top 5 damage dealers as hunters.  Week two, as people started to get some gear, some of the better hunters might be able to hold on to a top 5 spot but most others start to drift, maybe of those previous 5 that were top 5 only 2 would be top 5 now. By the third week as more people were getting gear maybe one of those original top 5 people are even in the top 10 any longer.

It is not that hunters are having bad luck with gear, or the hunters are just getting worse while everyone else is getting better.  It is that when a hunter picks up a few hundred crit and a few hundred haste and maybe even a couple of hundred mastery it might mean a 3 or 4K increase where a feral druid picking up the same exact stats would mean a 8 or 10K increase for them.

It is all about bad secondary stat scaling.  That is why as patches move on, hunters move down.  It has nothing to do with the ability of the person at the keyboard or their luck, bad or good, with getting new gear.  It is that the gear upgrades mean more to every other class in the game.

To create real balance for hunters they need to scale better with gear.  Hunters asking to be #1 on the charts are not asking because they want to be #1, they are asking because they know if they are #1 at the start they will end up middle of the pack or even lower middle of the pack once everyone is geared up.  All hunters are asking for is a fair shake, not for the #1 spot locked in forever.  Just not #1 at one item level and #16 when you are talking only 13 item levels higher.  Balance, that is all they are asking for.  If hunters where 8 and stayed 8 they could deal with it.  A hell of a lot more than being #1 for a short time and #16 for a long time.  This is all because of secondary stat scaling.

2) Button Bloat:

Button bloat isn't just about having a lot of abilities.  That is a common misconception among many people that hear the term, hunters too.  They do not realize why some hunters, myself included, complain about button bloat.  It is not that we have more to hit that is the problem it is because we have more to hit that makes what we hit feel less important.

Because there are so many buttons and blizzard is trying to make them all worthwhile to use that means that the average damage value per button and focus has to make anything with a cooldown worth using but not so powerful that it would be over powered in PvP.  This has the effect that every ability feels the same.  Even if one ability is more important than the other they are so close in value that it doesn't feel like it is a big deal.

In a way it is why even a bad hunter can seem decent as long as they are hitting something all the times.  Even if they are hitting the "wrong" abilities they can come off as looking like they are doing okay.  Sure a good hunter will be significantly better than the bad one hitting anything, but the anything hunter will not come off as horrible as the anything warlock because the warlock actually has some abilities that hit like a truck whereas everything the hunter has hits like a wet noodle.  If he hunter forget noodle number two and hits noodle number one an extra time he might lose 4K but if a warlock forget chaos blot they could lose 40K.  Abilities that hit harder matter more and for hunters with so many buttons there are not really any options that hit hard enough to every notice a huge difference.

That is all thanks to button bloat and one other thing that is rarely mentioned.  Auto shot damage being so high is another thing that makes the button bloat issue even worse.  Because auto shot damage is so high that means there is less damage to add to used abilities and that lowers them to the point where they are closer to each other and all seem to hit like a wet noodle.

In my most recent test (not really a test) of auto shot only yesterday while talking on vent moonfang spawned.  I right clicked on him and that was all I did.  At the end of the fight I was sitting at 72K.  Of course those numbers are off because of the legendary cloak proc and the high amount of adds there, but even without that I would say that it had to be close to 60K just doing auto shot.

If my auto shot damage was indeed around 60K (with my pet too) and my simmed DPS with no buffs, as that was the state I was in, is 175K, that means that over 1/3 of my damage done comes from doing nothing but right clicking on a mob.  Yes, this is faulty data because all my trinkets procced on the pull and there was some AoE from the cloak and the fight was really fast so there was not a lot of time for the damage to die down from its high point of 128K (yes with just auto shot) on the pull when all my trinkets went off.  But the fact that auto shot played such a huge part in my numbers (combined with survival pet damage) it leaves less for the "big" abilities to do.

This is why there needs to be fewer buttons, to make the bigger buttons bigger, and the filler buttons filler instead of on par with everything else.  It would make abilities feel more powerful which makes the class feel more "fun" instead of just having every single button you press hit for 60-90K and it starts to feel as what you hit doesn't even matter making the play style boring.

3) Specs:

The three hunter specs used to have identity.  The button bloat helped remove a lot of that because all classes just became hit whatever was best that was available while saving focus for our so called big shot that really isn't all that big.

All specs play that exact same way now.  Not like there was much of a difference in hunter specs before, lets face it, there really wasn't.  But what little difference they had, like marksman being the only spec that could refresh serpent sting and they all can now, or survival having traps mean a lot more to them than the other classes but they mean to same to everyone now.  It just seems that the little things that made each spec its own entity aren't there like they used to be.

A little redesign to give them all identity again would be nice.  Same could be said, and has been said, about the rogue.  Both the rogue and the hunter have the same problem however.  Even when making things different they are still basically the same.  Go stabby stabby or go pew pew, nothing really is all that different.

The specs can use some individuality again.  While there is still some of it they all seem to share the same rotation.  Keep sting up, hit those new bloat buttons on cooldown, use steady/cobra for focus, arcane for dump and make sure you have enough focus for your big shots when they are off cooldown.

Someone could argue, and I could not really disagree, that it is the same for every class in the game.  Maybe it is, maybe even if things were changed it would still be the same rotation, but some sort of change to add some individual feel to the class like they did with all three warlock specs, would be nice.

But Warriors...

So while I gave three reasons I think hunters are deserving those three reasons could basically fit any class in the game.  So while I do not agree that hunters should be forgotten because they are the most played class in the game.  They do have a lot of glaring problems and the fact that many players have a hunter at max for one reason or another as the stats might show, it isn't a reason to ignore those issues.

Warriors however are in a sad place.  The basic class of warcraft, the class you think of when you hear a tank.  They are the fantasy image of what a tank should be and they are the second class citizen of tanking now.  Everything warriors can do other classes can do better.  Just looking at healing alone, all other tank classes can fight and heal all day long but the poor warrior is left to die with limited healing and rage generation that makes even the most rune starved DK think he is swimming in runes.

Warriors are not just in a bad place, they are in the forgotten place.  Tanking and damage dealing they are just left out.  The hunters might be hurting in scaling, bloat and specs but they are not really in all that bad of a place when compared to where warriors are sitting right now.  Does that mean warriors should get the attention over hunters?  Not at all.

Why can't they just redo all the basic classes of warcraft that still need it?  Warriors, Rogue and Hunters.

Picking an Off Spec

For a few of my characters, most glaringly priests and warriors, I am going to have to decide on an offspec.  With mists coming soon and there no longer being any reason to have two of the same specs I need to start deciding what I want to do with my offspecs.

Throughout my game play career I've always been a tank on all my warriors and a disc healer on all my priests.  My offspecs for those classes where tank and disc as well.  If anything, I needed tri spec and if I had it I would have had three tank specs on my warrior and three disc specs on my priest.

There was never such a thing as a right spec or a wrong  spec when it comes to the roles for tanking or healing.  If you are DPS it was usually an easy decision.  If marksman sims best at the moment then you make your hunter marksman.  Simple as that.  On rare occasion there might be need for another ability in the mix.  Like needing concussive barrage for the beth fight.  So that would be one of those rare occasions it might be good to have two marks specs.  But over all, with DPS there was always a right and a wrong.

Tanking and healing is never that easy.  You could tank single target great with an AoE tanking build and you could tank AoE stuff with a single target build as well.  What it usually came down to is what the group you ran with had and needed and what you are most comfortable with.  So unlike a damage dealer, you had a choice.

Same goes for healing.  Some people liked to go into strength of soul for disc while others avoided it completely.  I have two totally different disc specs and strength of soul is in neither whereas another person in my guild, after I convinced them that disc healing is leaps and bounds better than holy, added strength of soul to his spec because he considered it required.  Two different outlooks, both with excellent outcomes, all based on opinions and neither is wrong.  My numbers might still be better than his but that has nothing to do with strength of soul, that has to do with him having never played disc before and me having played it since the beginning of time.

Speaking of the beginning of time on my priest, it leveled PvP.  A PvP spec is another completely different spec from either of the two I use now or the one the other priest uses.  So here we go, looking at four totally different disc healing specs and all four are, for lack of a better word, viable.

For tanks and healers there have always been specs based on what is best to have but there are usually some points you can spend on flavor, even now with fewer swing point options, the ones where you turn your tank spec into a kiting spec, or an AoE spec, or a DPS tanking spec, or a threat tanking spec.  There might be a suggested spec, but there where always different things you could do and not be wrong.

Now, with mists coming, and all specs have everything they are ever going to offer there will be no choices anymore.  No more will I need to have a tanking spec for main tanking, for off tanking, for kiting, for DPS, for PvP, for whatever.  My tank spec is my tank spec and that is all it will ever be.  No choices here. 

The flavor now comes from glyphs and those 6 talent points, all of which I can change on the road at any given moment as long as I have some dusts of disappearance.  This is why I no longer need two tanking specs.  I do not need my add spec and my main spec.  If I need to switch from one to another I just change some things with a dust of disappearance.  I must say in a way that is awesome.  No need to have two tank specs because if you needed to switch a few times in one raid for certain fights, just change some things around with dusts and you are good to go with one tank spec.

That also means I need to learn to do something else on my warrior and priest.  No longer can I say that I do not have a DPS offspec on my warrior, that my second spec is for add tanking.  I could just switch some things around if I need to tank adds.  I need to get a real offspec now.  I need to do arms or fury.

Mists might be a long way away still but I might as well get into the idea that my warriors are not all tanks and my priests are not all healers any more.  They can now be something else.

This is a whole new world for me.  I am a purist.  Warriors tank and priest heal.  Anyone doing anything different is wrong.  End of story.  Well, the story just got a sequel because of the changes coming in mists and this grumpy elf needs to find offspecs for his warrior and his priest.

I made the first steps last night.  I deleted my add kiting spec from my warrior.  Not like I had used it often anyway.  The last time it got any regular use from it was on Mal in BWD. I love that fight.  I love add tanking.  I know, the grumpy one is also a strange one.  Most tanks hate add taking.  I just like it because it feels like I am doing more than just standing there getting beat on but that is another story all together.

I switched up to an arms spec.  Like I said, DPS is easier when deciding on a spec.  Where there is no right and wrong for healing and tanking but there is a clear cut best spec for damage dealing.  Arms can go two ways.  It could go with a little extra in the AoE department or a little extra in the single target department.  I decided to go a little extra in the single target department.  After all, that is what should be the main concentration most of the time.

All my warrior's DPS gear is ungemmed and unenchanted.  I still had a green piece, a few 333 blues and only one trinket so I am stuck using one of my tanking trinkets.  Can you tell I never took gearing up for an offspec seriously on this character?  The only DPS type pieces I had where ones that I had won on greed rolls in randoms where there was no enchanter to disenchant or on the rare occasion I needed for the sake of an offspec I knew I might never even make or use.

So I entered the world of non-instant queue time on my warrior for the first time at 85.  I got well of eternity, it went kind of well but scared me a little bit because I was the top DPS on that one guy at the beginning where it always seems everyone is huge DPS.  That would not be so bad if it where not for the fact this was my first time ever playing DPS on this character at 85 and the fact I only did 14K.

Okay, 366 equipped item level I should be doing more than that, but having no experience, no gems, no enchants, I had some hopes that I could do this and as least pass it off as I know what I was doing thanks to the 15% random buff.

We work our way through things to the first boss.  I am no longer #1 in DPS, the tank is.  Which to be honest is not uncommon there.  However, I am number two.

We knock out the first boss, no problems, the DPS in this group is nothing to write home about and I am surely not helping matters any either being new at it, ungemmed and unenchanted.  I still did 17K, which I was happy with.  When we looted I was more than just happy, I was ecstatic that the DPS plate belt dropped and I won it.  I just replaced a 318 green.  How is that for lucky?  Replaced my worst piece on my first boss as a DPS.

Like I said, the group was nothing to write home about.  The DPS was less than you might expect to see now but I would hazard a guess the group was something like myself.  All people that knew what they where doing but all trying new characters or new specs.  For our low group performance we executed perfectly and had no wipes and no issues.  Everyone did what they where supposed to do, which in a random is like winning the lottery, the odds of a full group of knowledgeable people is a rare thing.

This little win of a group in the world of randoms made me think that perhaps I should try new things out a little bit more.  Maybe test some specs I have not played much.  Maybe build up the confidence to work on my warrior and priest offspecs for the first time.

I should admit I did cheat a little and that might be the reason I did okay my first time in as an arms warrior.  Although I was ungemmed, unenchanted and inexperienced I did spend a good half hour on the dummy before I even considered going into a random.  I think that is the only reason I did even half way decent.  I practiced ahead of time.

I did three more runs with my warrior as DPS, did them in an all guild group this time.  So with no 15% buff my numbers where a little lower of course but over all with each run I got a little more comfortable with playing him.  By the end of those three runs I was doing more DPS without the 15% buff then I did in that first run with it.

I think I can do this.  I think I can break the mold of warriors are tanks only and priests are healers only now.  Like I said, come mists I am going to have to anyway, so might as well get a head start with it.

So my priest is up next.  Oh boy this is not going to be a fun choice at all.  I can still be a healer only on my priest.  I can go holy.  There is something about holy however that I just do not like.  I do not like the feel of holy healing.  I tried holy for a short bit in wrath and I hated it.  I was so glad when ICC came out and everyone and their mother was screaming for help from a disc priest and I got to go back to doing what I love doing, healing as disc. For a long time there it seemed like I was the only disc priest on the server too which lead to a ton of invites from people I did not even know just because I was disc.

Since ICC came out and I became disc again my main priest and all other priests I added since have only been disc.  A time has come for a change and it looks like I am going to be giving shadow a try.

Perhaps if my endeavor into shadow goes as well as my one into arms for my warrior went I might actually have another option to roll with.  In the day and age we are now, with the huge buff to DS and people looking for healers with an offspec more often, I could get some pug time in on my priest if I had an offspec.  Although to be honest I am not sure why anyone would want me DPSing when I can pump out the heals as well as I do to begin with. 

At least my priest will have much fewer gear issues to worry about.  I can, for the most part, use my healing gear to DPS in.  Being spirit translates into hit the only things I would really need to worry about changing are the tier set items for the set bonuses and I can reforge everything else as needed until I get replacement shadow only gear.

Warrior was yesterday, maybe priest will be today.

Seems like sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It took a long time but it seems I am catching up with the 21st century now and leaving behind the warriors tank and priests heal mentality.  But there is one difference with me and that thinking.  While I will finally accept that warriors and priests can DPS it will still always be offspec in my mind.  They should still be tanks and healers respectively as their main specs.  Or they are doing it wrong. ;)

Okay, so I am learning to open my mind slowly, but I am trying.

Ability Meet Brick Wall

First, my Rogue.

I ran a few more normals last night and it seemed more of the same.  I am having no luck with trinket drops and no luck with a wrist or gun.  Outside of them, my other gear is starting to look heroic ready.  I'm up to a 334 items level now and (as long as the tank is not moving things all over the place) I am doing solid DPS on boss fights.

It might be time to move up to heroics even if I do feel I still have a lot to learn.  Had one run yesterday where I pulled over 9K on all bosses and 7.8K over all for the run.  My trash DPS sucks big time.  Maybe I will have some luck getting those 4 gear spots filled in heroics.  I am just so afraid of not being able to pull my own weight in them.

I even spent time on the dummy while waiting for the random working on timing.  I am almost to the point where I no longer even think when I do the rotation.  I've even gotten to the point where I am, mentally at least, redesigning my bar.  I want to move backstab to a more prominent place, even more so for normals being things die so quick I can never get two mutilates off on anything, doing a mutilate and then a backstab I think would be a trash increase.  Not that trash matters.

I am thinking that I might actually do better in heroics with things lasting longer.  I've noticed when I was on the dummy that my DPS would always start really low, I mean like 2K low and it would keep climbing fast until around 6K and then it would keep moving up slowly to about 7K.  Meaning that a Rogue is really one of those characters that needs a fight to go on for them to get the most out of the rotation. 

On my hunter, unless I open with cooldowns, the DPS I do right at the start will be the DPS I do over all.  It is the same all the time.  There is something to be said about always knowing where you are because your DPS is always stable.  My Rogue does not seem to have that benefit.  Maybe my heroic DPS will take a step up because things will last longer.

While I know a really skilled Rogue can pull more out of my item level I am not really skilled and I think based on my ability I have reached a brick wall in normals.  I might still do a few for the hell of it but I know it is time for me to move on. 

I am going to miss those fantastic normals I've gotten so used to do.  I pulled 12K on a boss yesterday and was last of the three DPS.  One was 18K and the other was 13K.  Do you know how rare it is to get 3 DPS that could do numbers like that and move from the bad at the same time in a heroic?  Really rare.  I'll miss normals where good players play.

Normals are where people that care about how they play learn.

Second, my Warrior.

My Warrior is sitting at item level 347 but it is really not 347 it is probably 344 or 345.  I crafted a bow to keep in my bag to get to 346 because I am still rocking a 318 bow.  All you warriors out there can probably name that bow I am sure.  Unless you get a drop in a heroic it is the best bow.

That coupled with my relatively limited skill as a tank means that I really need to step up my game when I try to do a Zul.  I only run with guild if they need a tank and then if I am having issues I bow out.  Nothing wrong with admitting you can't do something.  I've tanked many bosses in the Zuls but have yet to finish one.

I end at the cauldron boss in ZG because it always seems someone makes some sort of mistake and it all goes downhill from there.  I did the oops I stood in the fire thing a couple of times but once you do that 2 or 3 times you learn and never do it again.  Perhaps my gear and/or ability is what starts to make it harder on the healer.

Last night I got ZA, first time ever on this character.  I fear the dragonhawk guy as a tank.  I know the other fights I can do with ease but that guy was enough to give me fits on how I would do it.  So we did that guy last.  No problems up until there.  A few trash wipes but oddly enough the only trash wipes we had where wipes of over confidence.  We handled the harder of the pulls, the ones up to the bear, without any wipes or incidents at all really.  Even in a group that had no CC except for a poly.  I've healed and DPSed that and it is rare to see no wipes there.  I was impressed.

Other bosses, no problem.  A few wild pulls, no problem.  A scout that snuck up behind us and called help, no problem.  Three mobs that we just rushed into, wipe.  You know, it made for some fun laughing on vent.  How is it we can do all the pulls I see wipes on in pugs as if they where no problem at all yet something simple we wipe on?  It is not an original event just meant for us.  I hear a lot of stories from people that end up wiping on easy stuff when the hard stuff is no problem.  I'll blame over confidence so mistakes are made.

When we get to the dragonhawk guy I say I want to tank it by where the hawks will be coming from, the same way every tank I ever saw doing it has done it.  After they are released I start grabbing them up and then a few start squeezing through.  We have no hunter or rogue to send them my way so it is on the DPS to either kill them or the person they are on to come to me so I can drag them off.  Neither happens and we wipe.

Two more attempts later and I tell everyone that this standing by the gate is not working. I need more room to bounce around and if something gets past me and I am in the middle I can get it off of the person a lot easier then if I am by the gate and it is now across the entire platform.

We go with me pulling him dead center and it goes so much better. I am grabbing them as they come out because they need to pass me to get to anyone.  A few get away here and there, but a quick move over, clap, move back, and I have them back.  Sure, there is one or two here or there but things are going much better.  We have almost all the first side down when the second side comes and I do the same thing, grab them up, try to pick up the ones that snuck by, and people start going down.  Wipe.

Again, wipe, once more, wipe.  I could place the blame on the DPS, one pull one of the DPS that usually is good for 15K is doing 5K, but it is not all that.  I could blame the healer for not keeping me up but when I died I still had 2 cooldown left (a life and a dodge trinket on use) and that makes it as much my fault as his.  I could blame people for not moving from the fire ball thing but I got caught by one in our first attempts to and it is hard to fault someone else for something you did yourself once if it is something that only happened once for them too.

Maybe it was a series of unfortunate things that happened.  Everyone only got caught once, but everyone seemed to get caught in different attempts causing us to be undermanned in a few attempts.  Before we moved to the center tanking position I was not doing as well picking up the hawks so that was all on me.  The first guild healer, that had to leave, would always run away when he had the hawks on him instead of running to me, which made it impossible to get the damn hawks back. 

There are a lot of things that went wrong but in the end it was all on me.  I could have done better picking up the hawks.  I got hit by the fire only once in all the attempts but once is too many.  I got hit by the fire ball only once in all the attempts but once is too many.  I could feel down on myself about it, we tried for an hour, about eight attempts and we got him down to less then 30% in five of them.  The healer said I should not feel bad, he has done this 18 times since it was released and said he has yet to see any warrior tank that has been capable of doing this boss.

Challenge accepted.  I know I can do it. 

By the last attempt I was snagging 90% of the hawks right away and the other 10% could have easily been dragged over to me.  I had worked on the timing for when to use my AoEs to grab them, even used some engineering tricks to help out.  Those few that got away and are on the healer on the bone pile, well, here, have a saronite bomb.  They all came to me.  Ah, the joys of using all your tools when you play, some people forget they even have those.

I know I can do it.  Better DPS would have made it easier.  A rogue or hunter to help send strays my way would have helped.  Having all the first pack of hawks down before the second pack started to come out would have helped.  Hell, having better gear on my own would have helped.

Be it gear, be it ability, be it the people I was with, one of which had never been in there, I hit a brick wall.  Sometimes you have to wonder, it is not the perceived difficulty of a battle, it is the battle itself.  I tanked Chimaeron the other day filling in for someone yet I can't tank some stupid heroic boss with annoying pets.  Difficultly has nothing to do with tier of the content, it is all about your ability to handle the content.

I know I can do it.  Each attempt I got better at my timing and picked up a greater amount of hawks.  That is a case of my ability was getting better.  For the moment at least, after those attempts, my ability hit a brick wall.  I do not think there is much more I can do.  By the last attempt I was picking up nearly everything, not getting hit by anything and using my cooldowns when I knew the healer needed to tend to other wounds that where not my own.

A warrior can do this, just not this warrior, yet.  Give me a few more tries and maybe a group with 2 ranged and one melee instead of 2 melee and one ranged or a group with better DPS so all the adds are down before the second batch comes and I got this baby.  I could tell my DPS where getting tired of trying.  They all started out in the 13s and 14s and by the last attempt only one was in the 10s.  Maybe if I where better at the start when they where doing better it would have went down on the first try.  For now, I sit back and plan my revenge.

I am going to look over my engineering stuff and see what else I can use like those saronite bombs, they really did wonders to pull packs off the healer.  One bomb and he healer was all alone again.  Almost makes me think that a warrior tank has to be an engineer and not just for those dead sexy goggles.

Aggro: A Love Story

Aggro is a fickle mistress.  A relationship with her is like a game of cat and mouse.  The more you try to keep her from noticing you the more she will chase you.  The more you try to get her attention, she will try and escape you.

Reese, a dwarf just trying to find his way, has been flirting with aggro since he was a wee one.  When he was just a boy his father took him out to teach him how to fire a rifle.  Most of his early years where spent trying to target critters on the mountain side from as far as he could.  He got good at it but never met aggro until later.

He did not meet aggro for the first time until he was older and his father had taken him out hunting a real target.  While hunting some boar he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, what seemed like something looking at him while his father wrestled the boar that he had shot.

His father explained to him that what he felt was aggro.  The feeling thrilled and frightened him at the same time.  Who was this aggro, why was she looking at him, why couldn't he see her but he could feel her. 

He continued to hunt with his father for a few years and became a very good shot.  Almost always hitting his target.  As time went on and he got better with his gun he felt as if aggro was looking at him more and more often.  As his skills increased her attention to him seemed to get higher.  Each time she would look at him he would feel a bit frightened and tried everything he could to redirect her attention from him to someone else, anyone else. 

As soon as her attention was gone he would feel a little empty, as if he had lost something he really wanted.  This game of flirting bewtween Reese and aggro went on for a few years until one day when he felt aggro with full force coming at him.  Still young and not understanding what to do he ran and hid.  His father found him some hours later cowering in the ram pen behind the feed bin.  Rifle still in hand, trembling hand that is.

As part of his training, perhaps a bit earlier then expected, his father sent him away to learn from the priests about the art of healing.  While there he would learn the arts of the preservation of life.  No matter what he would choose to do in life it is dwarven rule that all people understood all aspects of life from hunting, to farming, to medic, to battle, you name it.  No dwarf would ever enter the world not understanding, at least in part, every aspect of life.

Instructor Simmons began teaching the new recruits the simple spells that they would need in simple situations.  Reese thought the instructor seemed a little off but could not place it.  Perhaps it has something to do with the strange hand gestures he would make whenever he would cast a spell.  He would yell out, okay, everyone try a greater heal now and don't forget the jazz hands.  He was a strange man, someone unlike anyone Reese had ever met before.

One night thinking back to hunting with his father he remembered the feeling he had when aggro was chasing him.  Full of fear but also exhilarated at the same time.  It seemed to him that while learning here he would never get that feeling again.  From his standpoint aggro would never find him doing jazz hands interesting enough to focus on him.  He was not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing but based on his last experience with aggro and remembering the fear, a good thing it would be.

A few years had passed and Reese had become quite good with his studies, he was even an honor student.  Professor Simmons even told him to start calling him Richard.  That is how well he became as the art of healing.  He had not felt the aura of aggro in a long time, so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like.

Aggro however had just been hiding for a while.  One day while out and about with some people from the school they where ambused by some Troggs and while fighting them he had the feeling of aggro wash over him again.  But I am doing jazz hands, I am not hurting anyone, why is aggro watching me.  Why does she still want me, he asked himself.

The feeling was not the same as it was the last time he felt aggro bearing down on him however.  It was almost thrilling and not quite as frightening as it was before. 

Some months later, after a few adventures, he had flirted on and off with aggro again and liked it.  She would chase him, he would hide, she would leave.  The cat and mouse game went on and on for a while when he made the decision that he had learned enough here and was going to return home.

He started to do some work on the farm for his father when he arrived home. Soon after returning he met a sweet, by dwarven terms at least, girl.  Her father was a well known warrior in the area, she worked the store back home where she sold some of the good he collected while out adventuring.

As a few years past they became closer and fell in love but Reese never stopped flirting with aggro.  He would often see aggro while chasing the wolves from the livestock but it was always a slight feeling, as if aggro was only peeking at him from behind a tree.  It had gotten to the point where if a day would go by without seeing aggro he would look for her.  Of course, as soon as he found her he would try to lose her again but the day did not feel complete without a date with aggro.

One day while visiting his girlfriend at her shop she told him that if they where ever to be together that he would need to learn the ways of the warrior.  No man would ever be allowed to take her hand without learning how to be a warrior, her father would not allow that.

The next weekend he set out on an adventure with her father and watched.  He did not participate at all but her father was an amazing fighter.  Even if he was in a group with four others he would tackle all the beasts himself and let the others take them down while he held them.

When they got home Reese asked him about why he would put himself in such a position where he could so easily die.  He explained that there was something exhilarating about it that he could not explain but he tried.  Listening to him explain he thought to himself that what he was describing sounded a great deal like aggro and the feeling aggro would give him.

He started to train with his girlfriends father the very next day and his world changed instantly.  He spent his whole life trying to escape the attention of aggro and now he was seeking it.  When he was trying to get away from it he never could, it would always find him.  Now that he was chasing it, it was always trying to leave him.

Aggro was indeed a fickle mistress.  When you do not want her their, she will find you.  When you want to hold her and keep her, she will try to get away.  It was a dance, a dance he had decided he liked.  It was more fun chasing aggro then running from it.

He decided, this was his destiny, he would be a warrior and he would embrace aggro.  He would hold aggro close and soak up every minute he got to have with her.  The fear from when he was just a wee one would once in a while come back but it was filled with excitement now, even if it were a state of fear.  It had changed because now he wanted aggro's attention.

He noticed that his true love, the one he always wanted to be with, was aggro.  Because of this, he never proposed to his girlfriend, they just dated, and dated, and dated, for years.

Her father when to his father one day to ask why Reese had not asked for his daughters hand in marriage yet.  Reese's father did not know but assured him that he would find out and make sure that his son would do the right thing by his daughter.

That night when Reese came home his father asked him about her.  Reese explained his whole story.  How he had been flirting with aggro for such a long time, since he was a kid and they were hunting.  How aggro followed him to school, how aggro would always follow him and how he fell in love with aggro while learning to be a warrior with her father.

He explained to his father that he is in love with aggro.  That is all he can ever think about.  How now that he is seeking aggro it always seems like aggro is trying to get away from him.  He was afraid that there was no place in his life for marriage if he was going to be spending so much time chasing aggro.

Reese watched his father stare into the flames as he sat in front of the fireplace.  He told Reese to sit down and wait for him while he went to get some refreshments.  His father got up and picked up two steins, filled with to the top with brew and came back handing one to Reese and sitting back down with the other.

"Do you lover her?" he asked Reese. 
"Of course I do." he responded. 

Reese did love her, she was the only woman he had ever felt connected to. It was his love of aggro that kept him from proposing to her.

His father thought for a moment and smiled looking at his son with a twinkle in his aged eyes as if he were remembering something from his very own youth.

"So you say you love aggro and you love her, am I getting this right son?"
"Yes pappy."

His father laughed loudly, finished his brew, got up and slapped his son on the back.

"If you love aggro son, marry a dwarf woman, you'll have more aggro then you know what to do with."

What the Hell Does This Button Do?

My Warrior now has himself his first two 359 pieces and will be getting his third today.  I could get more but I am not going to craft, or pay to craft, gear I can get something better than as a raid drop.  Sorry, it is just not my way.

I crafted the waist because there is no better waist for me outside of current heroic raid content (based on an article I read at least) and I am in a casual guild so the only time I will see heroic raiding is on my main after we are over gearing it, so I doubt my 7th 85 alt, 2nd in terms of tanks, is going to be getting into heroic raids any time soon.  That means the waist is a fantastic investment in gear that will last until 4.2 comes out for sure and might even last a bit longer depending how much play time this character gets. 

That is neither here nor there however.  This is about me deciding that it is about time I redesigned my bar because, as I get more gear I am going to want to pug into a raid at some point when I am bored and looking for something to do and while my set up was effective, it was not optimum at all.

See, when leveling I just throw things on my bar where they feel comfortable.  The way I think of things is, everything before 85 is temporary and quite honestly while leveling you will never make full use of all the tools available to you like you do at 85.  Even in lower level dungeons, nothing last long enough to give a crap about anything but killing it.

Now it is time to set things up so they work best for me.

I removed all my skills from my bars.  Set the layout with my bartender to be how I liked it, small and neat and not obstructing anything, sort of out of the way.  I hate a cluttered screen.  I set up all my hot keys and then I went to start and drop my skills back into the positions I figured would work best for me.

2, 3, 4, should be my most used things.  Shift for those numbers should be the things closest associated with them but for multiple targets. Alts for those numbers are utility skills I use most often.  Then I fill them out at 1 and 5 with the second most used things.   Additional things go in further numbers and some letters.  Either way, I laid everything out nicely putting everything where it is supposed to go and put my two biggest defensive cooldowns on C and Z as I do on all my characters.  I try to keep things somewhat uniform like that.

Now to test it out.  Lets do a normal and get some guild mates to abuse, I mean run with, while I start to learn where I put everything.  While waiting we are talking and someone mentions spell reflect.  Oh crap, I forgot spell reflect.  Where to put it.  Screw it, I'll just throw it as an Alt for now, I have a group ready.

One pull comes and there is this caster that just won't come.  Heroic throw will get his butt here.  WTF?  He is not moving and still casting.  I'll taunt him.  There, he is on me now, still not coming but at least not hitting anyone else.  Quick look down, heroic throw is not on cooldown, I hit it, the mob comes, about freaking time.  What the hell did I hit then?  Ahh, Shockwave but it did not go off because it was already on cooldown.  That makes sense.

Another pull, heroic throw caster, charge, rend, thunderclap, shockwave, cleave.  Aggro is mine baby, no way I am losing anyone here.  Huh? Excuse me mr dragonkin, where do you think you are going?  Taunt.   Hey, why are you not coming to me.  Taunt.  F it.  Intervene, challenging shout, charge back, shield slam that stinking dragonkin.  Why wasn't he coming?  Oh, I moved my taunt and forgot where it was.  I remembered every pull up to here, why did I forget now?

Cruise control.  That is why I forgot.  When I play I play on cruise control.  I just know where everything is.  The thing with this is, my cruise control still had my old keybinds in mind.  I have to keep thinking where everything is until I get used to the new set up.

Okay, for the time being I am going to watch my bars and see what I am hitting.  Next few pulls go fine and I start to fall into the comfort zone again.  I am staring at the bars as much as the mobs.  While that is not a good habit it is helping me get used to the new places I have everything.  This is why I am in a normal.  Less chance of messing up so bad because I have my eyes on my bar instead of the mobs all the time that it will cause a wipe.

Next pull.  Wipe.  No kidding.  I had just mentioned on vent that this is so much better for me because it is giving me a chance to get used to my new keybinds and we are less likely to wipe here if I screw up.  Thing is, this wasn't my fault.  Well, not completely.  The healer was D/Cing.  Her vent was lagging so bad that by the time her saying, I just DCed, actually came over vent I had already pulled. 

While the other three classes DPSing where all classes that could heal, I was at 10% left in no time and before I could even move my fingers fast enough to start blowing cooldowns or before they could throw a heal I was dead.  I swear, I never saw my life go from 100 to 10.  It was like, charge, 10%, death in a matter of 2 seconds.  Or at least it felt like that.

Another pull the casters are ripping me apart.  Spell reflect, nothing.  Shield bash, nothing.  Heroic throw, nothing.  I couldn't seem to do a damn thing.  Normally, when questing, I love facing casters, it is a free kill.  There is no way a caster ever gets a cast off on me.  Now, I am missing every interrupt.  Thank god for having a pally DPS that just fell in love with rebuke and was having fun interrupting everything he could.

Reaction speed was doing it to me.  My interrupts where in easy to reach places but each one of them took a second for me to recall from memory where the bind was now, by that time, it was too late.  As for shield bash.  That was just forgetting where it was to begin with.  It was in the same place on my bar it has been since the day I trained it.  One small problem with that.  That spot was not shift 3 any more, it was now shift 1.  Oops.

The rest of the run went on like that.  Small mistakes here and there.  By the end of the run I was pretty much used to a lot of the new positions.  Taunt was no longer 4 it was now shift 4.  Shield bash was no longer Shift 3 it was shift 1.  I can name a few just thinking about them now while not even on the game.  Only a few however.  When I can name them all I will consider myself ready again.  I sense a lot of normal runs in my future.  I'll get used to where everything is again, in time, but it is a case of what does this button do sometimes now.

You might ask, if I knew where everything was so easily before why am I changing everything now.  Why did I just not keep it the way it was.

Effectiveness.  While I did know where everything was before and it was smooth, some of the things where not in really good places.  A few where not even bound at all because I used them so infrequently.

Binding even the infrequently used ones to something, even if off bat, means when the time comes that I need them they do not become click me when you need me things, they are easily accessible like everything else.

While at the moment it seems as if everything is worse I know, from experience, that in the end everything will be better.  I will have more things keybound, I will have them in a better set up to where the things I use the most are in the most comfortable places for me to reach.

Have you ever asked yourself why your keyboard has the letters all over the place instead of in order as if they where thrown in there with no rhyme or reason?  Well, there is a reason.  The letters are set up that the ones you will use most often are in the most comfortable places for the human hand to move.  The lesser used letters are in the places that the human hand is not as comfortable flowing.

Not sure how they figured this all out but that is the reasoning behind it.  That is the reasoning I am redesigning the keybinds I use.  While the other ones where fine, I could use them and use them well, changing their layout will make them more effective, just like the keyboard is designed to be more effective.

Why didn't I just put them in the places I wanted them at originally?  Well, this is my first 85 warrior.  I did not know how I wanted everything until I got here and played here a little bit.  On my other warriors, I have 2, I will be sure to level them with this new set up now so when they reach end game they are used to it.

I am sure, while it might not have looked like it in that run, I will be a better warrior over all when I get used to this set up because everything will be in a more comfortable place to click meaning my reaction and use of them will be faster.  I missed so many interrupts because I had to think, even for a fraction of a second, where it was.  If I had just known and done, if I had just been running on cruise control, I would have never missed an interrupt.

I figure 6-10 normal runs, guild only of course, I do not tank for randoms and even more so will not tank when still learning something, and I will be ready again with some confidence.  My gear might be heroic, my skill set is not right now.  Missing a shield bash in a normal is nothing.  Missing it in a heroic could mean a wipe.

Revenge, revenge, revenge.
Why the hell is revenge not going off?
Oh, revenge is now 1.
So what the hell does this button do?

The Average Tank Am I.

There is a warrior tank in my guild that is amazing.  Remember tank switching on deathwhisper heroic where taunts did not work?  Would never have noticed it with him.  He could take aggro off someone that had a huge lead in three seconds.  How he does it I do not know.  He is, to put it simply, amazing.

Running heroics with him is like being in a car chase in a movie.  You know the type where the person is always taking the right turn at the right moment and they never get caught in a dead end or slowed down.  It seems as if he always knows what to do and even more importantly how to do it perfectly.

Do I aspire to be that good?  Of course.  Do I think I can?  Not really.

There is a reason for that as well.  I like tanking and I like the warrior mechanics of tanking but I just don't put enough time and effort into doing it.  Yeap, that is it.  I don't invest the time needed to learn to be that good.  I also don't think I would want to.

For as good as he is, his skills are basically wasted.  He never needs to use those skills in a guild run.  He could just play it simple and not have any issues in the run because he is a great tank.  He is the type of tank that can easily tank randoms by himself for the new Call to Arms but he won't.

With his skill set he tanks raids.  He tanks for guild for the run we are doing that week and pugs the other raids we do not set up for the week.  He does not need to run heroics.  Why would he?  To get gear?  Doesn't need it, he has better gear in raids.  To get valor points?  He gets those from raids too.

This is the type of tank you want with the new Call to Arms but you will never see him.

Lets down rank this warrior some to another good warrior I know. 

She has lots of experience, back to the start of the game.  She has tanked everything from MC when it was end game to Ulduar when she quit raiding.  She can hold her own.  He picks up adds like a frog catching flies.  She know all the moves she needs to make to get the job done and she can do it without thinking.

Call to Arms wants her tanking too.  Too bad she does not tank any more.  Her warrior is for guild uses only if someone is in need of a tank.  She is now a healer.  Will Call to Arms make her dust off her plate and give it a go?  Nope, she has no desire to run outside of guild.  While she is capable and she does need the gear and the valor points it is just not worth it for her.  She runs for guild because she has fun running for guild.  Running without even a pocket healer means she has no use for randoms.

Lets drop the skill level just a bit more now. 

We now have me.  A warrior that actually leveled protection.  I tanked a few here and there while leveling.  I've tanked almost all my little warrior life even if I do have an arms spec now.  I know where my tools are, I know what they all do, I know how to generate as much threat as possible and single and multi target rotations.  I just need to get better at them.  I still have to think about everything I do.

I tanked GB for the first time last night and it did not go to bad.  No wipes, only 2 trash pulls that where scary as hell but we survived and one accidental boss pull, that we downed 4 adds and the boss with at the same time.  So over all it was a good run and you could say I did a good job tanking.  While it was a guild group, which helps tons, I still feel there is a hell of a lot for me to learn.

I would not be a bad person to have in your pugs because, as shows, I might not be great but I am capable to some extent.  I am, the average tank.  I can get the job done, I can make sure there are no wipes, I can survive and lead a group. Maybe 60-70% of the tanks I have seen in randoms usually fit in this skill set, average.

Most tanks can do those things.  Most tanks are like me.  They are capable of getting the job done but they need competent people behind them to do it.  That is why in a guild group I am fine but in a random I am a baddie.

I take my time between pulls so I can think about my approach to the next pack.  That means I am bad tank.

I mark all targets for CC based on what is available. That means I am a bad tank.

At least that is how people in randoms look at it.  I do not think of myself as bad, I think of myself as unsure based on limited experience.  I have not been doing it since the dawn of time like the previous example.  I have not mastered how to handle every situation as the first example.  I am learning that.  It could take me months, it could take me years, who knows, but I am not that good yet.

I am the person they want in the Call to Arms that they might be able to get.  Someone that has something to gain from them.  I can gain gear and valor point but I can also gain experience.  That is more valuable then anything they can put in a bag.

I want that experience and would love to chain run heroics while I got better.  Instant queue is incentive enough for me.  That is all I need, to know I can get my practice whenever I decide to in a instant.  People like me that are willing will chain run heroics for the bag.

However, I am also someone that will not take advantage of it.  Sure, they will get some people in my league to do it but many won't.  Most average tanks are like me.  Average.

We know what we are capable of and even more importantly we know what everyone else is capable of.

You get your people that know how to CC, but then will not get the mobs get to you so you can grab aggro on them and start attacking.  Making life hell when there are still 4 or 5 mobs not CCed.

You get the people that will tell you that you suck because you want CC.

You get the people that will ignore the skull and end up hitting the caster I just silenced to make come to me because they read some retard on the forums that said always target the tanks target.

You will get people that don't know a kill order.

You will get people that will not move from the bad under their feet when I move because it is under us or even worse, yell at me for moving the boss around when I am trying to get out of the crap burning our boots off.

You will get healers that don't know how to time the big heals for the big hits and suddenly I am left blowing cooldowns I should not have needed to and then I do not have them when I do need them.

You will get healers that will say, you are tanking too much damage, even with 80% total avoidance.

You will get DPS that won't interrupt because it might lower their DPS 0.01% for the fight.

You will get a lot of people that make your life hell, people that are not like guild groups.  These are people that basically want you to carry them.  Out of 4 random people you will always have at least 1 of them in a random except for the extremely rare occasion where you have been blessed by the gods with 4 decent players.

Last night when I ran GB only 3 of us where on vent, the other 2 where not.  When the boss accidentally pulled with 4 trash mobs nothing needed to be said.  It was a clean attack plan.  They knew how to handle it, what to do and the kill order even if there was now a boss involved.  That is why we did not wipe.  Try that in a random.  I dare you.

Blizzard needs to understand that the reason I don't tank randoms, and maybe people like me don't tank randoms, is because of the people that are in them.  Giving me a bag isn't going to change anything.

Lets take the down one rank further.

Now we have the tank just below me.  Someone that has a tank spec and might even have some tank gear.  Maybe on a rare occasion they might have tanked for some friends but they are really not good at it.  They usually know that, that is why they will always stress it is their off spec.  They would be fine for a little here and there but not for anything serious tanking wise.

These are the people that will be suckered in by the gifts most likely.  Some of these people will take the trail by fire and come out being fantastic tanks.  Some of them will get burnt out from the stress of random people and just go back to being DPS/heals.  The remaining ones will just swear off tanking forever.  Basically an I quit unless it is just all my friends.  See, that was once me, I am now in the just friends mode and upped my skill level a tiny bit to move into the average range of tanks.

Now lets go to the bottom of the barrel.

This is where most of the tanks will come from.  Cats with a new bear offspec.  Fury Warriors picking up a one hander and a shield. Both thinking their DPS gear should be fine as long as they have the spec.  That is assuming that they even try to use the right spec.

Any class that has a tanking spec will be open to people that never once read an article on tanking wanting to tank.  Not even for the instant queue but because now they can get all types of goodies from doing it they are willing to give it a shot.

Over time some of these people might actually become good tanks.  After a few horrible outings they might go look it up on the forums and realize that there is a reason tank gear has dodge, parry and block on it.  Most however, will not.

Most of these bottom of the barrel tanks will continue to queue up.  They will figure, they have instant queue and if they get kicked they will just queue again. 

Sooner or later they will come across a group that is so good that everything dies so fast they will not notice they suck.  Maybe they will get lucky and come in on the last boss and bosses are where tanking gets to be really easy.  Every tanking class can hold single target threat without even thinking.

If things do not work, instant queue again.  Sooner or later they will get a group to carry them or a group that has no choice but to take them because they kicked the last tank for being horrible.

Being there is no accountability for peoples actions any more with the LFD system people will not care if someone on a server they never even heard of is laughing at their gear or spec or ability.  They won't care about being laughed at because when it all comes around full circle you might have laughed at the tank but the tank is riding around on that mount you have now tried for 213 days straight and don't have yet.

They got rewarded for being bad but persistent when they kept trying until they found a group willing to carry them.

I am jealous when I say, I don't think I will ever be as good as Mr. Speed Racer Tank.

I am glad to say, I have not tanked for 5 years just to give it up like Ms. Vanilla Tank..

I am happy to say, at the end of the day I am just average and am have fun tanking and learning.

I am relieved to say, I have passed the learning curve and do not have to start learning now like Mr. Beginner Tank.

I am proud to say, I will not pimp myself out for a bag of gifts just because I can spec tank like Mr. Bottomfeeder Tank.

In the end, I am happy to say I am an average tank.  Sure, I might not be great but at least I admit it.  Get ready for the influx of tanks that are average, at best, thinking they are gods gift to the game.

You asked for shorter queue times DPS.  Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

I can just picture my little warrior walking around with a button that reads... proud to be average.

Born: Warrior Stats: 4 Days 13 Hours

My Warrior is finally grown up.  Hitting 85 yesterday in less then 5 days was a given really.  It is not the fastest but surely a nice and quick trip through the levels.

His story is a simple one.  He started out as Protection only.  I leveled with a friend that was playing a fire mage for a while which was a great way for me to learn to keep aggro.  Around the late 40s I started questing on my own. 

I stayed Protection only for a long time.  Stance dancing taught me a little something about playing characters where it was needed.  It did get frustrating however and I never really felt like a tank until I was able to charge in defensive stance.  Once I hit level 50 I had that feeling that now I am a tank.

Somewhere around level 72 I decided I wanted a DPS spec as well and bought dual spec finally.  I decided on Arms.  Not really a favorite of many but I liked the style and being I am the one playing it that is really all that matters.

I had gotten tired of tanking and even more so tanking wrath content.  It seemed as if the entire world changed once you reached wrath.  While from a tanking standpoint wrath was the easiest to tank it seems it was also when everyone in the game went instantly brain dead and forgot how to play. 

So I would queue up as DPS.  Didn't really change anything.  I ended up tanking at least a part of the runs I actually did go on because all the tanks sucked.  I got into the habit of making a macro to equip my sword and board and using it and switching to defensive to save the healer at least 5 or 6 times per run.

I only did two dungeons in Cataclysm content while leveling, both guild runs so there were no issues.  It showed me how the effective of leveling hurts you in Cataclysm.  At level 81 I was pulling 8K-11K DPS at leave 83 I was pulling 6K-8K and I am willing to guess now that I am 85 I will be pulling 4K-6K if the numbers stay in line.  I do 4500 while questing so that seems like it would be somewhat accurate.  Leveling is like a penalty.  It is worse on healers however.

So now I am 85, what to do?  I want to do it again with another character and do it in less then 4 days with no heirlooms or anything bonus, just on rested.  I am sure that with no professions it would be easy.  I would easily say one day of play time was dedicated to leveling professions.  That does not address this guy however.  What does his future hold?

I jumped over to my Blacksmith to see what starting gear I could make my Warrior, DPS or Tank, to start out with.  In a matter of minutes I said, screw this crap.  I have more then enough Chaos Orbs on my blacksmith to make a few pieces so that was not the problem. 

It was the truegold requirements that turned me off on making them instantly.  Six truegold for one piece, are you freaking high?  On my server it would cost me around 700 gold to make one, or 1000 gold to buy one.  Which means one piece of gear will cost me a butt load.  Hell no, not today, thank you kindly.

I can not in my right mind spend that much gold to get a piece of gear that all I need to do is beat a boss and hope the random number gods are on my side that day at get it for free.  Free is much better then almost 10K for 1 piece of gear any day.  Not to mention I need to gear up for two specs.  If it were 1 or 2 pieces of truegold I would build my tank set, spam dungeons, spam raids, and get all the gear I wanted.  Like this, my warrior will most likely sit in green until the second or maybe third tier of raids come out.

Sad really.  I like tanking on my warrior.  I just can't deal with the gearing up required again and doing normals and then heroics with the batch of people this system puts me together with.  That is one of the reasons I am a big supporter of nerfing the ever living crap out of heroics.  Not because they are hard but because it seems that every random group I get in seems to get at least two of the four random people that have recently had a partial lobotomy or something.  These people are not bad players, calling them bad would be a compliment.

Maybe they should introduce another type of heirloom.  It seems blizzard loves to help people level alts easier.  Next step is helping people gear up alts easier.  How about a new key system that allows you to get into heirloom dungeons.  Basically you get one character to max level.  Get it to a certain gear level and then spend something big like 40000 gold, 4000 justice points and 4000 valor points and you get a BoA heroic key that allows you access to stupid easy heroics.  Dungeons that take only 15 minutes max and always drop the top level gear for current pre raid content.  Burn through, gear up alts.  Ah, the joy that would be.

It would not mean you would not get some bad players, hell still lots of bad players.  I can probably point out thousands of players that suck that would be able to afford those numbers but at least you can say they paid their dues.  The earned that key that allowed them into the heirloom dungeons and being the heirloom dungeons would be stupid easy anyway their lack of ability would not really hurt anyone. 

Call it welfare gear if you want, I do not care.  I just do not have the patience to deal with the average player (read: horrible) in the random system any more with content that actually requires at least 4 brain cells and I am not going to bug guild mates to help me gear up an alt. 

So my warrior was born at 4 days and 13 hours and it was abandoned 10 minutes later after looking at the cost to craft starting gear.  I guess that makes me a bad parent to abandon my new baby so soon but there is only so much abuse a person can take before they become a broken person beaten to the point of submission and I've taken more then enough in the gearing up process of the 6 characters that came before him so I refuse to do it again.

Time will nerf the dungeons as people get more gear.  Blizzard will nerf the dungeons even further as time goes by as well.  Craftables will go down in price as will current 359 BoE which on my server are up to 46500 gold, no kidding. They are really that price on my server.  By the time Firelands comes out I am sure their will be new craftables and all the previous tier stuff will drop like a rock.  I'll gear up my warrior then and start his quest from that point on.

Summing up on a side note.

Dear Blizzard,

If anyone buys a BoE for 46500 please ban their account for buying gold.  There is no need to check the background of the person.  There is no need to make sure they bought gold.  If someone pays 46500 for a BoE that will be replaced the first time they step into a raid or save up points to buy a piece of set gear they are either retarded or buying gold.  Either way, banning them would be good for the game.

Thank you,
The Grumpy Elf.

Need More Mobs

While leveling my Warrior I go a little crazy sometimes.  The jewelcrafting quest where you need to get 10 elemental goo I usually get with my bear by going to gather up 10 mobs and I mow them down.  My bear is level 85.  My Warrior was level 80 when he did the quest.  I did the same exact thing.

It is insane the amount of damage a warrior can take and survive in a solo environment.  It also helps that they seem to put out insane amounts of damage as well.  At level 80 I puled a pack of mobs when I first hit 80 and entered Cataclysm content and did 7K DPS on them.  7K DPS, a heal after each kill and the ability to take a beating makes for fun leveling.

Whenever a mob is about to die my eyes are already scanning the landscape looking for my next target.  Stop, why would I ever stop.  Sometimes I over pull and find myself taking a dirt nap but I've learned that it is better to die than take things one at a time if only because it is freaking fun.

I've leveled every class and outside of my bear my warrior is the only class I've ever approached questing like this with.  All other classes I kill one mob at a time.  My warrior and bear look for as many mobs as possible.  It must be a rage thing.  It makes for fun leveling.

If you have never played a warrior and you are interested in a fast game play style I would suggest giving it a shot.  Warriors are always looking around for more mobs.  More, more, more. Leveling is fun when it has no down time.

Stealth Nerf or I Overlooked Something.

My Warrior hit level 78 this weekend.  Went back to level it some because, well, warriors are fun.  They fit my style of play.  They are constant movement machines.  Down time is a bad thing for a warrior.

Once I hit level 78 I logged out and went on to my Blacksmith to make myself some sweet Cataclysm gear which would, in turn, make my leveling even faster with the Cataclysm insane stat boost.  It didn't work as planned.

Maybe I do not remember things correctly but I could swear that when I leveled my blacksmithing that the starting armor I was making to level was level 78 to equip.  Now they are all level 80.  No big deal.  I can live with that.  78-80 is easy enough as is anyway.  I was just wondering if I had lost my mind or was it changed to 80 from 78.

I asked a few guild mates and they all said the same thing.  All Cataclysm patterns are 78 to start.  Then they looked and they said, okay, it says 80.  Maybe I was wrong.  Are we all wrong?  Is this a stealth nerf?

Someone in my guild hit the nail on the head without even thinking about it.  He said, that would have been awesome.  You could twink out at 79 and own in PvP.

Tada, that is why they changed it.  I bet that is exactly what people where doing and they did not want them to do that.  He nailed it without even noticing it.  That is why there are no more craftable items for 78 usage.

My Warrior is now 81.  Like I said, leveling is easy and when he entered Cataclysm content I noticed that my drops where level 78 equip.  Seems like they never adjusted those.

Now, we can use this to our advantage.  78 equip items can no longer be crafted but they can be dropped.

Pro Tip:
Use this to your advantage.  Sell 78 BoE items, even greens.  People will buy them for insane numbers.  More then the enchanting materials you will get from them.  You never know, Blizzard might change those as well as they changed the crafted ones but take advantage of it now.

Will Someone Remind Me I Suck At Tanking

Out of shear boredom I decided that I would run a random with my 57 Prot Warrior.  Mind you that I have not tanked since the change.  At 57 I really did not see anything really different.  I needed to replace most of my skills on my bar and needed to keybind some things being that seems to have gotten lost on some of my characters.  Not all mind you.  Some characters have all their key bindings in tact, others have none. 

I set things up.  All macros across the board disappeared from my bars so I needed to put them back as well as many skills.  I get into UBRS for my tanking run.  Mind you that I am not great to begin with and now I am stuck here?  I had not tanked in months on this character and with that said not since the changes either.

I go in, make a few pulls and am surprised by my increased damage.  I don't remember being the #1 DPS in the group at this level.  Lower levels I always was but in the late 40s I noticed that the DPS started to catch up.  I was nearly double the second DPS.  Not a bad thing.  Made keeping aggro a lot easier.

I round up one pack.  No problem.  Round up another pack, two pats are coming close to I grab their attention as well.  No problem.  3, 4, 5 mobs.  No problem.  I am on cruise control.  Next pull we somehow manage to get something like 13 packs.  I round them all up, which was an adventure in UBRS.  If you have ever tanked it you know what I am talking about.

Somehow I must have gotten out of line of sight of the healer or the healer just had a fail moment.  No one else was taking damage at the moment so it was either me or the healer that messed up here but lets not argue who messed up because in a second you will see it was all my fault anyway.  My heath is going down faster then a thai hooker when I hit my keys for by oh shit buttons and nothing happens.  Oh crap I forgot to put them back on my bar. 

I can not even think of why I wouldn't.  I start looking at my bar thinking maybe I put them in the wrong place and can just click them really fast.  Scanning over them... nothing.  Then I finally see them.  They are keyed, why did they not go off?  (maybe it was that new stupid query system they are using)

I hit my oh shit buttons, quite frankly amazed I am still even alive.  However, in that 3 or 4 seconds that I was in panic mode I lost a few of the mobs and they ate the healer.  How the healer had aggro when they sure as hell where not healing me and no one else was taking damage is beyond me.  Either way.  I charge to try and pick them back up and round them up.  Hit, quick turn. Back peddle one step, left one step, just to get them all in front of me of course.  We have about 4 or 5 of the mobs left.  By some miracle I am still alive and make a mental note that I need to add my bandages and potions back on to my bar as well.  Did not even notice they were missing as well since the change.

Then the unthinkable happens.  Well, only unthinkable if you have never tanked UBRS before.  A pat come by.  God damn I hate this place.  There are like 36 mobs in a 3 inch space.  How the hell am I supposed to control that.  One of them targets me and charges.  Throws me against the wall stunning me for, well who cares how long, with my low life I was dead.  Within seconds the DPS were dead as well.

I really suck.  I apologized to the group and explain it was my fault.  I must have missed setting something up after the changes and asked them if they can wait a few while I sort out my issues.  They where understanding and said no problem.  I moved a few things around and rebound a few things that seemed to not be working.  I think that is a bartender issue that made them disappear.  I add my little JC healy thing, bandages, potions, etc to my bar.  All on a side frame I use specifically for things like that.

All seems well now, lets give this another shot.  We head back in.  Same area where we all died a horrible death just minutes earlier.  I wait for the pats to walk away and pick up the few remaining mobs from that huge pack that killed us.  We down them easily.  I wait for the pats to come close enough, we kill those two nice and quick.  Now I survey the lands and see huge packs on each side again. Knowing that if I pull one and we get a runner it will surely run into the other pack.  It always works that way right?

I tell them I am pulling them out, back to the doorway.  They go back in the door.  I fire a shot and run behind the door and wait for them to come.  4 come, I round up 4 and as soon as I get my threat rotation rolling I am a frog.  They start going after other people and those other people run.  As soon as I can I go and round them up again I do and suddenly as soon as I do that, I am a frog again.  It feels like ZF all over again.  I hate this crap.  This goes no for a while.  Seems like forever. We finally down them with 1 DPS lost.

I apologized again, sorry, I was a frog.  Next pull, same thing happens again, this time we lose 2 DPS but still pull it out and once again I see myself saying, sorry, I was a frog.

The next few pulls go well and then suddenly I make a pull that apparently I did not see was that close to another and instead of 5 mobs we have 10 mobs on us and 2 pets.  Things are super crazy at first as I try to pick up the others I did not notice before.  I get them all gathered up but apparently did not notice a little imp that blended into the background had decided that he did not like healers.  The imp toasted the healer nearly instantly.  We continue along and were really doing well, got almost all of them down before we wiped.

As is becoming a habit I apologize on the way back because I had not meant to pull two packs.  Everyone once again is rather nice about it.  The healer said they had to leave however.  I know it was my fault, they where just being nice about it.  A DPS leaves as well.

When new people come they say, you are supposed to be doing LBRS not UBRS, the mobs in upper are all 2 levels above all of us.  Well that does explain a little about why it was so difficult.  We did make it pretty far into UBRS so maybe I should be impressed instead of feeling bad.

We head over to LBRS and start or trek through there.  Lots of the same stuff happens.  Extra packs that were not intended, me being a frog, you know, all types of stuff that has me apologizing again.  More people come and go, 2 more healers a few DPS here and there.  Nothing much changes.  Once we get a boomkin that is doing huge DPS things start dying fast enough that is not a great deal of an issue any more.

We are flying through things now and I am apologizing a lot less because there is less to mess up on when everything is dying quickly.  However, somewhere along the line things start to go wrong again and it is all the same stuff all over again.  After the third complete wipe I all but give up.  We have been in there an hour and a half, we are basically lost as none of us know our way around and it does not seem to be getting better any time soon.  After the healer and one DPS dropped I said I am sorry but I am going to go as well, hopefully you will get a better tank next time.  Good luck and have a nice night and I left.

I leads me to believe that I seriously suck at tanking.  There were a few bright spots.  Such as making it as far into upper as we did with only one wipe when the lowest mob was 2 levels higher then I was and the few times where we had adds all over the place and I was able to pick them all up and being able to hold aggro on all those packs while the DPS did their thing and never needed to worry about being attacked. The dark spots however were far to many for me to think of it as a good run however.

UBRS/LBRS owned me big time.  I am sure in time I can get better if I try again.  I am sure that with a more disciplined group of DPS I would not have as many issues.  I am sure with a better healer I could have lasted longer.  But for the moment after that run all I can say is that I feel like I suck at tanking and in the end I can not blame the DPS or the healer.  As a tank it is all on me.  I need to control the situation, if I do not do that I am a fail tank.  It is really that simple.  Bad DPS will be bad DPS, I need to adjust to that.  A bad healer can hurt however.  Still, it was all on me.  I need a lot of practice.