Lets All Take A Moment to Mourn The Death of Marksmen

Doing my morning read through some blogs I popped over to Del's place, a fantastic blog with some great theory crafting posts if you dig that stuff, and read his newest post Dumbing Down Marksmanship.  You can read his post for all the gory details about the death but I will cut and paste my reply to him here just to share my opinions on the matter.  Might clear up some of my typos here however ;)

My reply to his post (again read his post) was as follows.

I popped over to read my blog list before even going over to MMO-C and in a way I am glad. Reading your post was better than reading a list like that on MMO-C and raging.

Seriously WTF?

I was so looking forward to being able to play marks again for the first time since wrath. It had always been my favorite spec and now it just feels so lackluster. Even if they balance it, even if MM still works out the be the spec of choice for raiders. They just took all the life out of the spec.

The chim 5% heal was a nice little bonus in PvE, it helped the healer some and with the way we know healers always get screwed at the beginning of an expansion they will need all the help they can get. I called it a nice little bonus, no, that 5% heal was HUGE. Even more so in PvP.

The removal of master marksmen leaves me perplexed. It will come back, trust me on this one. Blizzard design philosophy for all damage dealing classes is reactive play. With no procs, which MM would have none now, there is no reactive play. I can make a macro and do my 100% maximum DPS rotation with one button now without having to ever react to anything. This will never happen, trust me. If not this coming back, something that procs and changes the rotation will. They will not let a spec go live that can be put in a one button macro for 100% DPS.

Concussive barrage should not be removed. I know they are trimming the PvP CC bloat, but this is not CC. It is a slow and it is weaker than slows other classes have by a long shot. If they are leaving other classes with spammable abilities that not only slow but stop movement, this is just a case of "we hate hunters" going on to remove it from us and not others.

Careful aim, believe it or not, I have absolutely no problem with this as weird as it might sound. With it being tied to rapid fire now it just seemed too powerful the way it is. The main difference is we will now need to wait until the second or maybe third tier before crit capping for CA time instead of getting there in the first tier.

Steady focus is the one that made me want to respond WTF. This is the heart of the MM rotation, this is what sets the good marksmen away from the bad ones. Hunters are lucky enough that they can do okay even if they mess up priority a little as long as they are always casting something. But that was not as true for marks. You needed to keep steady focus going, and that was the skill of the spec.

Actually I loved the spec for the brief time I could use it in cataclysm because of the short span steady focus lasted for and the tightness you needed to perform at to get maximum DPS while keeping it up. As I explained to someone in guild once about it when I called MM one of the hardest specs in the game and he said hunters were not hard. I said, you have half a second leeway, which means any lag, any indecision, and you lose steady focus and your DPS goes in the tank. Half a second every 7 seconds and you can screw it all up. Name one other spec that requires you to work at that rate of precision to do it well.

Sure it was made a lot easier in mists, but it was still the entire draw of the spec. You actually needed to do something. There were actual decisions that needed to be made. Steady focus was a skill ability. Rarely do I agree when people say dumbing down. Even when they raised it to 20 seconds I did not call it dumbing down, I just said they are making it easier. This time, no doubt, they are dumbing it down. Removing one of the things I loved most about MM. Sad day, sad day indeed.

Piercing shots, and the related perk, just make no sense. I do not see what was wrong about a physical bleed effect. This might be removed for balancing, but if it is there is one side effect that might seem nice. Our shots can be stronger, so we would feel like we were stronger, because they would not have to keep them down knowing they were leaving bleeds behind. But with no bleed, and no buff to the shots, this is a huge nerf. A very huge nerf.

Today is a say day for hunters.

Lets all take a moment and bow our heads for the death of the marksmen spec.

The World is Different on The Other Side

I finally finished collecting valor on my horde hunter and moved on to the next part of the legendary quest line.  The part I dread most from the alliance end of the spectrum.  Time to PvP.  I have alliance character after alliance character backed up at that point where I play and lose over and over until I give up on that character for a few months, like I have on my lock, my shaman, my druid, etc, in the past.

I did not go straight into the PvP, I knew that horde side there would be a lot of waiting involved.  One of the side effects of being on the winning team, people want to play even more.  So I went and did the PvE part of the quest first.

This turned out to be one of the few moments I can say alliance had it easier.  I could solo the horde commander on a healer.  He hits like a wet noodle, he has one ability that gives you an extra action bar, and if you hit that instantly it really does not do anything to you.

Even before they nerfed them down so people could do them in smaller groups soloing the horde commander on an alliance character with a pet, like a hunter or lock, or using a tank so they could heal, was easy.

So I expected the alliance commander to be just as easy.  Just look out for one ability that doesn't need a super quick response to it and make sure it does not hurt me.  Even in a lesser geared ungemmed and unenchanted character this should be a piece of cake.  And then I died... on a hunter.  Yeah, I was shocked too.

I started the fight, saw the gun ability, the shockwave like ability, the bomb things on the ground, I avoided them all no problem, then he started to cast something.  Normally I interrupt but I had already started to cast a cobra shot and I did not have my stop casting macro for my counter shot on this character.  So I figured this would not be his big move because you need to actually, you know, do something about it, so I would just interrupt after the cobra but I was wrong on both count.  It was his big thing and I did not interrupt it in time.  Damn travel time, I interrupted with more than enough time, but it did not make to him in time.

Out come six dwarves from hell.  No big deal right, misdirect and multi shot and I will mow them down with the boss.  Not exactly.  Holy crap these guys hit hard.  They hit 10 times harder than the commander does and there are six of them.  Even my glyphed mend pet has no prayer in hell of keeping up with their damage.  Dead pet, and I died too because apparently I was not really set up for kiting like I am on my regular hunter.  Oops.

I run back, revive my pet, and go back in but holy crap the six dwarves are still there.  Like an idiot I get all of them and the commander again and die once more.

Third times a charm right?  Not exactly.  I go back up this time and slowly pull, only getting three of the dwarves and not all six and the boss this time.  Mend pet does not stand a chance, these guys are the dwarves from hell and they are beating my pet in a way he has never been beaten before.

Twice bitten thrice shy they say, or at least I do when it comes to this, and I saw my pet dying so I readied myself to feign ahead of time and did not die but thankfully this reset the dwarves and they disappeared.  Awesome.  As it was going I would have needed to try to pull them one at a time if I wanted to kill them and get back to trying the commander a second time.

With the dwarves dead this time and the knowledge that I must interrupt that ability at the cost of anything I had no problem with him when I tried him the second time.  If only it were not for travel time I would have done it the first time.  If only I had my stop casting macro I would have done it the first time.  If only if only if only.

I am so embarrassed I died on my hunter to such an avoidable thing.  I should have read up on it before I went.  I just figured it would be something stupid simple like the alliance version was.  The alliance version didn't have no "do this instantly or die" things.  Unless you want to call pressing an extra action button a "do this instantly or die" thing.

I should have my hunter card suspended for a month for that indiscretion, for dying to something a hunter should never die to.  But I made up for it.  After I was done with him I went out and killed the three alliance rares.  After I was done with them I yelled out, I am in your base killing your dudes, and then let out an evil laugh before getting out of there like a cow out of hell, on a bat.  Or was that like a bat out of hell.  Either way, I was done with it even if my ego was a little wounded from dying in a situation I should have never died in.

After getting back to the shrine I decided to queue up for the two battle grounds.  It took me 9 minutes to get into the first one.  A huge change from the near instant time I am used to for alliance, but a wait to win is better than an instant loss any day if you ask me.

So did I win?  Not exactly.  We lost, it was a really close match however.  Not like the alliance losses were we are always brutalized.  I actually thought we were going to win up until the last second.

I started to think, maybe it is just me.  Maybe I am really just that bad of a PvPer that I taint whatever group I am in.  But 15 minutes later I would find out.

I enter the mines and there are two people explaining what we are going to do.  No one is insulting them for trying to lead the group like always seems to happen on the alliance side.  The two people working together explaining are not even together, they are from different servers, but I suppose they could know each other.

We head out and follow the plan and take a quick cart, then another.  We listen for call outs and the group, the entire group, responds near instantly.  Alliance teams usually keep doing their own thing thinking "someone else will get that".  I was not used to this type of team work.

It was not an easy fight.  The alliance did not just fall over for us but we took it from them.  It was a really nice feeling to win and I do not care even for even one second that I needed to wait 15 minutes to get in.  Even when we lost we almost had it.  It was not a brutal defeat like the ones I have become used to.

My next wait happened to be 23 minutes.  The temple was a joke.  We walked in there like we owned the place and we kept it.  We got a lock on all four orbs early and just hung out in a group in the center.  Every so often some alliance member would walk in and offer themselves as a sacrifice.  They even killed one of us carrying an orb once in a while.  They would grab the one and we would send a few out to go get it back, which never took long.

It actually made for a very boring battle ground even if the start was very fun and exciting.  When you are trying to get points it always seems like the winning team is gaining them so fast and the game passes like a blink of an eye.  But when you are there sitting on an 800 point lead 1200 to 400 and you are waiting for that last 400 points to come it damn near feels like it is taking a year and a day.

So given the option, get into battle grounds instantly and losing all the time or getting into only 3 in an hour and winning 2 of them I do not think there really is a comparison.  I will take the winning with a wait over the losing instantly any day.  Any horde member who complains about queue time I have two words for you, roll alliance.  After experiencing that for a while you will never complain about the wait for a battle ground again.

So now on to the rest of the legendary quest story line on my horde hunter.  I like to experience it all on both sides, it make for a much fuller story.  I'll resume it whenever I am bored again.  It was a nice change of pace after spending the first few days of the week losing every battle ground I stepped into.  Most definitely the world is different on the other side.

What Constitutes Actually Being a Raider?

The term raider is wider used now than it has ever been thanks to the addition of LFR and now flex to the game but I am still stuck in an old school mentality about who I call a raider.  While it is only an opinion of course I wonder if I am right in my thinking or if I am out of touch with the players of today.

Talking to a few people in the comments here recently has showed me that it seems many people that have raided, myself included, for a few years at least are in some way out of touch with the average player or average raider if you will.  We all expect too much out of them maybe.

As a casual raid leader looking to rebuild after having many regulars quit in the past months, mostly quitting the game outright but a few saying they might return, I have seen a steady stream of new players applying to raid and calling themselves raiders.  When the time comes to test them out I can't help but believe these people do not understand the word raider the same way I do.  Or maybe it has just changed it meaning with the times and I am the one that needs to change the way I view the word.

Of all these new people there are a few rules to being a raider I see constantly being broken.  Things that immediately say, you are not a raider.  Things that I consider staples of what makes someone a raider that goes well beyond ability to play well in a raid.  However playing well enough to raid is an issue of itself, but I will save that for a little later.

You are not a raider if...

... You consistently sign up for raid events and do not show.
... You do not let the raider leader, raid assistant, or any officer know of a change in your availability.
... You do not have whatever standard voice communication your raid team uses ready to go.
... You never come with your own flask or potions.
... You do not even consider using flasks or potions.
... You are not gemmed .
... You not not reforged.
... You are not enchanted.
... You are not using your profession bonuses, such as black smith gem slots.
... You do not have an encounter mod like deadly boss mobs installed.
... You show up to raid late.
... You expect people to wait for you 10 times a night.
... You are never ready when there is a ready check.
... You can not tell the difference between a healing circle and a hurting circle.
... You die on every fight to avoidable damage.
... You can not listen to simple instructions like stand on the marker.
... You do not know what the raid leader means when he/she says to use personals.
... etc

I could go on, I could probably go on for another 20 or 30 lines, but really this sums it up, the idea I am trying to get at.  I am not even talking about the ability to raid here, I am just talking the basic things that people who want to raid regularly, as in raiders,  usually take for granted.

I have a fair deal of alts as anyone that reads here knows and on some of them I do not really gem or enchant them until it is current item level of normal or better because I have no intention of using them in raids.  They are profession alts, fun to play alts, farming character alts, or what have you.  They are not characters intended for raiding.  So I understand completely why someone would not be gemmed or enchanted or have flasks and potions on them.  On characters I have no intention of raiding with I do not either.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  But I would not call myself a raider on my mage until it was raid ready.

Do I raid on those characters?  I'd do an LFR here and there, maybe even join in on a flex, but only if it is a really strong group that I know can cover for my unprepared non raiding character.  Most of the time if I plan on joining a flex I will still get myself raid ready however, just because that is who I am, but I would not always expect it of others. 

I often ask people to bring an alt in and never fault them if they are not ready for it.  If it is not their main toon or a toon they intended to raid on then it is understandable.  But even in a casual raiding guild there are the basics of being a raider that must be followed and it is amazing that all these people coming to me saying they are raiders looking for a raiding guild because they want to raid are anything but raiders.

We had a warrior a few weeks ago that we needed to walk through installing our voice chat program because he never used it before.  He had signed up for a raid, he had been approved for the raid, he was on 30 minutes before raid time when I started to assemble, but he waited until we zoned into the instance to ask for our voice chat information even if he was asked a few times to pop on earlier.  Sorry, this is not a raider.

We invited a new healer to a flex four as the second healer.  Our main healer can solo heal it, but it is a good way to test a new healer out.  I was solo tanking so I will not make a big deal of me out healing them because they did have low gear and solo tanking those 3 bosses means lots of vengeance and that means lots of healing for me, but when other non healers are out healing them because they died to every single mechanic and kept needing all our battle revives and when they were not healing much even when they are were alive, so much so that a hunter almost beat them on 2 of the fights in healing done.  Sorry, this is not a raider.

We invited a rogue to a normal run that was a 565 item level, fully gemmed, enchanted and accurately reforged, to the naked eye at least, but he never managed to reach 90K DPS on any of the first 8 fights before we called it a night.  Sorry, this is not a raider.

And that leads into performance.  It was always believed, at least to me, that raiders were better players than the people you might bump into otherwise.  They had to be if they wanted to be downing bosses right?  Wrong it seems.

I've tested out so many new damage dealers in the last few weeks my head explodes just thinking about it.  We found one semi decent one and countless players I would throw back to the sea because they are not quite big fish.  People I would not think of even bringing on a flex run based on their performance for the gear level.

Then there are the ones that make a huge deal about being raiders and joining to raid and not getting an invite to the raid like one three weeks ago.   I explained to him that he just joined the guild today, this run would be a continuation of a run from the day before and the people that were there the day before would get invites first but if there was an open space we would let him know if he wanted to hang around.  He then whispered me, but I signed up for the raid, send me an invite.

I explained to him again, he responded, I came here to raid, invite me.  When I rebuked him again he whispered someone else in the raid to invite him, then a third person, then made a big deal about not being invited to the raid in guild chat and rage quit, all because he was a raider, in his own words, and he came here to raid.

After the run I looked on battle net to see he had limited raid experience in LFR, no flex, no normal raids, not even older ones.  What made this person think they were a raider? 

Would I have taken him, yes, for the earlier bosses as least to see what he could do.  Even without experience, even with lesser gear, we could easily carry him through normal or take him on a flex, just to see what he could do.  As a causal guild we never had a problem with new players to the raiding scene or people that needed to gear up, we will take anyone that is willing to learn and get better.  For him I would take it from there, can he be taught, is he good enough as is and with practice will he get better, will he show up each week at a set time ready to roll.  All those things need to be seen when you have no raid experience before I would even consider calling someone a raider.

Is it me just out of touch with the game the way it is today or is everyone a raider?

People like I mentioned I could call them back ups, trainees, fill ins, retired, a million and one things, but I would not call them raiders.  Not when you show up without the basic simple things that actual raiders know are required, like gems and enchants.

Do you think we need another word for people who want to raid but are not actively raiders?  I think so.  It would be so much better than hearing someone bitch and complain that "I'm a raider and I should get an invite" just because they did the LFR once.

LFR is like riding your bike with training wheels, being a raider is like riding a motorcycle.  Sure, learning the ride a bike will help when learning to ride a motorcycle later, but just because you are riding a bicycle with training wheels doesn't mean you can join the hells angles motorcycle club.

I think it is just me, I am out of touch.  Everyone is a raider now, just like blizzard wants it and that rogue that can't do 90K with perfectly set up 565 gear deserves a spot over... you.

Warforged Nightmare: No Thank You.

Blizzard has released a new cash grab mount called the warforged nightmare.  It is going for $30 US which is $5 US more than mounts usually sell for but that is with good reason, you are not just getting the mount but the hitching post.  It allows others to get a temporary mount.

Now $5 US for the "fun" item doesn't seem like a bad price and $25 for the mount is up to opinion, they have always been that price so if you had no issue buying them before then I guess the price is fine with you.

So it is not a price issue why I will not be buying this mount just like it was not a price issue why I did not buy the previous mount they released.  It is because I do not support the company in the way I used to in the past because they have lost my confidence and I do not feel that spending my money on items as such is worth it even if I am a mount collector and even if I happen to think the mount might look nice.

I am not a tight wad.  I am not saying I won't buy it like many do for reasons of being a cheap or thinking everything should be free because I already pay a subscription or because I do not have the disposable money.  I will freely be the first one to buy a round of drinks for my friends or even cover for a friend that has no money just so he can stay and hang out.  I have always said I would help out a friend within reason.  While I would cover a few rounds for a friend that has no cash I would not do so every single week, it is called taking advantage of me.  I am not a fool and I liken buying this mount, or any mount right now, to that same thing.  Being taken for a fool.

I've always been supportive of the things I like.  Remember those days back when napster was big?  (music file sharing service for those that are not old like me)  I used to download songs 24/7 it seemed.  Every song I ever liked I got, live versions, different concerts, etc.  I would also download anything I heard on the radio I liked and even other songs from those people that made the song just to see if I liked the group and not just the one song.

If I came across an artist that had multiple songs I liked I would go out and buy the CD.  You might ask, why would you do something like that if you already have the songs for free?  I would buy them because I support the person who was making the music and I knew they did not make any money off a free filing sharing service like napster.

When offspring released one of their albums for free download online I downloaded it.  I then went out and purchased the CD when it was released.  The reason is that I have always been a fan of them and even if they put the songs out themselves for free and I was not "stealing" it like I would have been with napster being they offered it themselves I still supported them and they deserved to get paid for their work.

What blizzard is doing now is different, or at least feels different to me.  I was always a free spending person when there was something I felt was worth spending money on but I try not to be a foolish spending person and I believe it would be foolish to show my "support" for blizzard like I showed my support for offspring because they do not deserve it right now.

I used to buy every mount blizzard put out as soon as they put it out, I supported the game and as such I felt it was worth it.  Now it just seems like a distraction to get us away from the idea that there is no new content.  I can not support that.  I can not support blizzard.  They are getting a subscription fee from me and I am even beginning to question if it is worth that, so it surely is not worth spending more on a mount.

When blizzard gets back to the way things were at the start of this expansion with new content coming at a reasonable rate I will gladly go back to supporting blizzard and buying whatever they put out because that is who I am, someone willing to support what I like.  But until that point, no thank you blizzard.  You can keep your mount.  If you want more money from me you are going to have to earn it.  Release new content.

Who is Blizzard Catering To?

This could very well be a hot button topic depending on who you ask you will get a different answer.  If you ask a heroic raider they will tell you that blizzard is catering to the casuals and if you ask a casual player they will tell you that blizzard is catering to the 1%.  Both will say they are catering the the bad players and the bad player will tell you there is nothing for them in game because blizzard forgets about them.

In the end I think that blizzard is really catering to none of them, and all of them, and that is the reason there are so many issues with the game right now and they have been bleeding subscriptions for a long time.  Because they are trying to cater their content toward multiple specific audiences instead of just building quality content and trying to give people the means to access that content. Which is exactly the design they had used during the biggest times of growth, make content, help people get to it by giving them the means to do so, and let them do it on their own.

If you look at the period of growth from vanilla to wrath where it leveled off and then the period of decrease in cata and mists you will see two very different games.  It is still warcraft, the same one we always played, but the game during the period of growth was about making the content and correcting what they believed were little errors in the over all design so they could make the game better over all, not for anyone in specific.  When compared to the period of decline were you see them focusing on adding things for people only instead of improving what works already to make it better.

There is an old saying that goes something like "You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time." and that is where I believe blizzard has gone wrong.  They are trying to please all of the people all of the time.  That is something that can not and will not ever be done.

It leaves people to blame everything on the game as "things are bad because they are catering to the 1% / casuals / bads".  The thing is, they are right.  They are all right.  Blizzard is catering to all those groups.  Perhaps it might not be the definition of catering you might be using, but they are.

You might think that catering to the 1% means they are making everything for the one percent.  Or catering to the casuals means they are making everything for the random group making community.  You get the idea.  But catering means putting something on the table for those people.  So everyone is right, they are catering to all these groups.  They are not catering to "only" one of these groups however.

That is where the design error in the game started to take place.  When they decided to make things for a specific gorup instead of just trying to make it quality, quick, and enjoyable, which you could see was the basic concept of vanilla thru wrath.  When the game was growing they were making their game their way.  Since then they are making the game trying to appeal to certain types, and we have seen the decline since then.

Why is that, why would making more content specifically for more people a bad thing?

Because they tried to please all of the people all of the time instead of all the people some of the time like the saying says.   You know what happens when you try to please all of the people all of the time, you upset them all instead.

So if Blizzard is catering to everyone, and not catering to any one group specifically, why do we all always blame them for doing so?

Because we are human, most of us at least, and it is human nature to see what someone else has been given and think because I do not have it they must like them better.

When I mentioned this catering to everyone idea to a friend of mine who is a long time player he said he wasn't sure he understood where I was going with it and wasn't sure he agreed with me.  Then the next day he said, I think I understand what you mean now after thinking about it.

This is how he saw it, paraphrasing of course.

When blizzard created the game they had a story to tell.  They built their game to fit the story as a vehicle to tell it and as the moved the story along to further chapters with illidan and arthas they just updated their game to the times but still focused on it being about the story.  When they stopped having a story to tell, in cataclysm, and needed to find another way to keep people playing they started to mess with the content that was always great thinking that they could make the game better and instead of making it better they just alienated parts of their audience with some changes making it appear as if they were catering to people other than themselves.

I said to him, you nailed it.  That is exactly what I am getting at.  When blizzard was concerned about making a great game and telling a great story people moved along with it, people changed with it, people grew with it.  If they just kept designing their game their way they would probably be fine but they started to listen to people and their rose tinted "it was better when" glasses.

Did the original cataclysm dungeons cater to a different crowd than what their player base had become?  Yes.  Everyone will admit that.  People who loved it, people who hated it.  People who were indifferent.  They will all agree that those dungeons were made for a specific type of player.  That was the downfall of blizzard, when they went backwards instead of forward in an effort to design something for one specific sub set of players.  It is where the catering idea comes from.  Instead of moving forward as they always had, they took a step backwards.

They changed something that was a change in their moving forward development.  No matter who they changed it for does not matter, it did not fit the flow of the game any longer.  That was no longer the direction the game was heading, they made a hard stop and u-turn and people started to get off because the ride was no longer for them.

Since then they have consistently tried to make content for specific groups, not only one group, all of them, and by doing so each step in the way they lost people because it was a change.

Blizzard needs to get back to basics and stop trying to design the game for different groups specifically and back to designing the game to tell a great story in the way that they always had, their way.  Adjusting the game to the times because the times warrant the changes, not because the players, or specific groups, want it.

Because as soon as you start listening to us players someone is bound to say you are catering to one type of player over another and that is what loses players.

Just a theory of course, but I am just like everyone else.  I believe that blizzard is catering to a certain type of player and that player is not me and I am not alone because everyone no matter how they play the game things the same thing.  There are things that seemed catered for me as well, but as is human nature, it is easier to remember what you feel slightest by than what you have been given.  That is why they are losing subs, because everyone feels they are being slighted and forgets all the great things they have been given.

Who is blizzard catering to?

They are catering to you.  No matter what type of player you are, raider, PvPer, casual, bad, etc, you are being catered to and that is why the game is losing players.  It no longer has a focus, like it did when the game was still more about the story telling and blizzard was still making the game they wanted to make instead of the game they thought people wanted them to make.

Four Newbies Walk Into An LFR and...

The title of this post is actually a little misleading, the four people I am talking about are not exactly what you would call newbies but they were new to what they were doing, so I guess it sort of fits.  I think a more appropriate title for this post would be "It is not hard to not be bad."

The four newbies were as follows.

Me, on my druid healing with a total of one days healing experience on a druid in the last 5 years.  Our resident DPS beast attempting his hand at a hunter that he hit 90 on a month ago because he liked the idea of me saying I had so many key binds for PvP and he wanted a challenge.  An extremely dedicated player who saw what our resident DPS beast could do as a feral druid and wanted to see if he could ever be that good on his druid that was a boomkin up until two weeks ago when he decided to try feral and started to gear for it.  And last but not least a player who was well versed as a ranged DPS and healer but had never played on a melee class who used his boost to 90 on a warrior less than a week ago in his first raiding experience as a melee.

So we were four experienced player all in roles we were experienced in.  If we were to do poorly it would not be that surprising.

We started in ToT even if we could all get into SoO because, lets face it, with our experience on those respective classes we might as well start on something we were a little better suited for.  A place where we could learn a bit about how to get better at the roles we played.  Even if we were geared enough for SoO there are already too many players doing poorly there that should be in lesser LFRs learning how to play their class and/or roles, why compound the problem.

In the end none of us ended up being LFR heroes, we did not carry the group, this is no story about how awesome we were, but it is a story about the fact were were not horrible.  None of us did anything you would consider well above and beyond our ability.  None of us will be looking to steal a slot in a real raid team on these characters any time soon, heck, we might not even be ready to steal a slot in a flex on them yet.  None of us excelled at playing in a role we were not used to.  But all of us did decently.

I was number 1 or 2 in healing done, while never being higher than third in over healing (which is weird for a druid), on all the bosses we managed to do except for one where I was 4.  The new hunter who was a month old that had never played one before was top 5 in every fight.  The druid that just switched from boomkin to feral two weeks ago was also top 5 in every fight and the warrior that was a boost to 90, while finishing a little lower, was never less than 10th in damage done despite having never once played a melee class and only having timeless island pieces mixed with the instant 90 green pieces.

We might not have been great, but we were not bad.  Not even by a long shot.  But looking around us showed that most people were exactly that.  Bad.

There is no reason to be that bad.  Sure, we all start off not knowing how to play, but there is a difference between doing badly and being bad.  It is not hard to not be bad.

Each of us could have had someone that knew how to play the classes well look at us and say we were doing badly, they could pick out that I was letting lifebloom fall off, or I was not using wild growth on cooldown, or one of a million mistakes I made, but they would not say we were bad.  We might have not been doing as well as we could have, but that is different from being bad.

The 4 week old hunter spent some time asking me questions and I answered them.  He spent some time on the timeless island killing things, in battle grounds killing things, and even doing the LFR a little in the last few weeks.  He might not be ready to challenge me on the charts, but he is already starting to shape up to be a damn good hunter because he spent some time playing with his character, learning his abilities, figuring out how they interact, and asking questions.

The 2 week old feral druid asked a million and one questions, spent some serious time on the target dummy, and showed that he is willing not only to learn from people that know how to play the class but he listened to them, he did not just ask the questions and then still do his own thing.  When weak auras were mentioned to him by me and another he stopped what he was doing instantly and downloaded it and spent a while trying to get it set up to his liking.

The boosted to 90 warrior went to noxxic and read about the priority system, visited some other web sites for tips and tricks, even contacted an old friend that does not play warcraft any longer but used to play a warrior.  But not only that.  Having never played a melee before he spoke to a few people about how to play in melee so he would have a better understanding of what he would need to do and what he would have to expect.

Then there is myself, and I already said in another post about what I did on my druid.  I went to the proving grounds to practice some, asked a lot of questions and spent some special alone time with my healing addon so we could get to know each other better in terms of druid healing as well as visiting more than a few how to heal as a druid web sites and forum posts.

We might not have been great, we did not bring anything to the group that anyone else couldn't have, but we were one thing for sure, and that was not bad.  We were most definitely not bad.

All it takes is a desire to do well and a little bit of time to attempt to learn and while you might not become a great player you surely will not be a bad one.  There is no reason anyone should be bad, even more so when in group content.  Nobody is asking for everyone you run into in the LFR to be a great player, not even the elitist jerks, they just want everyone to try, to at least not be bad.

Moral of the story.  If you want to play solo, who cares if you are a beast mastery hunter that never uses bestial wrath, you are not hurting anyone but yourself and you are not even hurting yourself as long as you are having fun.  But if you are going to play in group content you owe it to everyone else to at least seek out a basic understanding of what it is you are doing there.  Not just for the group, but for yourself as well.  You do not need to be bad because it is not hard to not be bad.

A Legendary Undertaking

Part of enjoying the game for everyone no matter how they like to play the game or whatever they tend to take joy from is to set goals for themselves.  From just leveling, to leveling professions, to PvPing, to getting achievements, to raiding, to pet battling, what have you.  We all find what we like to do, set a goal to do it, and put into it whatever efforts we can to get it done.

Roughly 6 months ago (guesstimating here) I had four characters with the legendary cloak and one on the runestone line that happened to be a tank.  Of the four characters two where hunters (ranged DPS), one was a rogue (melee DPS) and one was a priest (healer) with the one character getting close being a monk (tank).

I then hit complete burnout on the LFR.  The people in it had just gotten to me.  Even if I do not recall anyone saying anything offending or mean to me, because I was usually one of the better players so there was never any reason to complain about anything I did as you fly under the radar like that, it was the way I saw others being treated that bothered me. 

I didn't like the attitudes of people, the disrespect they showed each other, the bickering, the waiting, the ninja pulls, the people intentionally trying to wipe us, the people entering the raid in roles they were not, the meter spamming so bad players can think they were good just because they did okay in an LFR, there was (and still is) absolutely nothing to like about the LFR.  So I stopped trying to get the cloak on the last character I really wanted to get it on at the time, my monk.

See, my personal goal was I wanted to finish the quest line on one of each respective role.  Just like I leveled characters on both sides because I wanted to see the whole story I wanted to complete all four ending quest bosses for the legendary so I can see all the fights.

It did not happen because I finally ran into a boss I could not beat.  No, it was not the end of the quest line boss, it was the community boss.  The hardest boss in the game to deal with.  There are no strategies for how to beat the community boss.  It can not be reasoned with because it is unreasonable, and as the saying goes, some people just like to watch the world burn, and it started to seem like everyone in the LFR wanted to watch the world burn.

Perhaps their thing, the thing that kept them playing, was to try and ruin the game for everyone else in it.  Just like the guy that pet battles all day trying to get to his 5000 wins, they wanted to see how many people they could get to rage quit in an LFR because they were doing all they could to ruin the experience for everyone.

I could write an entire post asking the question about that alone.  Is that as viable a play style as any other?  Do they have as much right to play the game the way they want to as we have to play the game the way we want to?  It would make for an interesting article of course and maybe, just maybe, for as much as I hate those people, I might have to take their side, reluctantly, and say perhaps they have the right to be a jackass just as much as I have the right not to be one.  But as I said, that is a conversation for another day.

Those people made me quit.  My goal, as I said, was to have one of each type of role finish the legendary quest line so I could experience it all.  Honestly I think there should be an achievement in game for beating all four of the final legendary challenges.  I am sure there are many players that have already done it, but I am not one of them.  But I will be some day.

That was my legendary undertaking and it has been six months since I worked my way toward it.  Until last week that is.

I went into some LFRs on my monk and wanted to see if I could get a few runestones.  It did not happen because the couple I did I was not lucky enough to get any in and none were the ones with the so called (but not always) guaranteed drops.

In the last week I dabbled in the LFR again a bit, more than I had in the previous 6 months combined.  I healed on my druid for the first time in 5 years.  I DPSed on my monk, because even if my monk is geared to tank and will do the tank challenge I do not tank the LFR, that is also why my druid is now healing, because I refuse to tank the LFR.  And last but not least I changed a few talents on the mage I had not really played in a while and decided to try it out with my whooping 528 item level and quite honestly I was surprised how quick I was able to find a rhythm with it and found myself topping out at 160K on most fights making me understand why mage is still considered the flavor of choice if you are looking for an easy class that can put out decent numbers.

Maybe the LFR will scare me away again but my legendary undertaking is once again going to start up.  I am going to get that tanking cloak and do that tanking challenge.  I will try my best to not let the dregs of humanity drag me down again like they did before.  I will try to make sure that they do not make me begin to hate the game with the same passion I used to love it like they did before.  I will try to finally finish off what I had left stalled around 6 months ago because I let them win, I let them chase me away from the LFR.

However, I think I want to step up my game on my legendary undertaking.  Not just do each quest.  I want to do each class.  Do I have enough time for that?

Can I survive long enough in the LFR world that blizzard does nothing to moderate?  Can I keep putting up with the people that ruin the game for not just me but basically everyone I have ever spoken to in one way or another.  Can I do it?

Lets take a look how close I am with all the classes, only going to count a few of the multiples that I intend to get the cloak on.  I will not be mentioned the extras I have no intention of getting it on like my second mage, my second shaman, my second death knight, etc.  Lets look at the progress of where each class stands on their legendary undertaking.

My Main Characters, A Hunter:

Stage: Complete

This is the only one that will really be a story, the rest will just be summations of where they stand on the quest line and maybe a little about how the handled the last battle, for those that have the cloak.

Now, this is a hunter focused blog for the most part even if I do ramble about everything.  My main is a hunter, always has been.  From when I first started in BC, so when I came back in wrath and started a new character, it has always been a hunter.  There will be 4 hunters mentioned here, but that does not mean I might not do more at some point.

As my main my hunter got the cloak first and got it as early as possible to get it, meaning as soon as 5.4 came out, I logged in and got it.  But it went through the longer route.  I had to deal with having 18 sigils of one type before I got 10 of the other because they had not fixed it to award the other if you already had enough of one.  This was also because one type dropped in MV and the other type dropped in HoF and ToES, not either dropping in any.  So of course I had more of one than the other.

This hunter also had to deal with six weeks of valor capping for the part of the quest when we needed to collect valor.  This was also when those six weeks of collecting valor made sense, it was a time filler.  Now they just need to remove that step of the legendary line because all it is now is a waste of time for people trying to play catch up.  Blizzard really needs to notice that and remove that part of the quest all together.  It was needed when first doing the line to extend the length of the content, it is not needed now.

This hunter did not have much of an issue with secrets even if I did need to do LFR to get them mostly because we were stuck on horridon for the longest time and it was worse when it came to the runestone part of the quest.  While we were clearing ToT by the time I got to that stage, I had no luck with drops what so ever.  I once went a full 6 weeks with no runestones.  And no, do not say that the last boss is a guaranteed drop because it wasn't. 

If anything the only reason it is a guaranteed drop now is because of people like myself bitching and complaining that we had not got one in six weeks.  The drop rate for runestones was nearly as bad as trying to find a moonstalker pelt back in the day.  If you remember what quest I am talking about, I feel sorry for you, you went through the same hell I did.  Even when they changed it to the guaranteed drop off the last boss, that was the only one I got each week.  It felt like it took forever.  Because it did.

When I went in for the big battle I believe I had a 524 item level and I went in blind.  Just figured I would do what it is I do as a hunter and blow his butt up.  Did not quite work as intended and I needed to try something different.  After a couple more attempts and switching a few abilities I gave up and said, let me just go back do doing what I do best.

I switched back to my default spec, my default talents, and went after it the way I go after everything as a hunter, with guns blazing.  The same as I tried the first time, but now it was 5 or so attempts later and tricks were not working for me, so back to basics.  I actually ate, flasked and used a pot this time too.  I beat him like a red headed stepchild.  He did not even have a chance to summon adds or mirror images.  I hit him so hard he did not know what hit him. 

Maybe if I had not dabbled around and if I had given it 100% the first attempt instead of going at it with the approach of "lets see what he does first" I would have one shot it.  Either way, as my main, it was not really a problem at all.  The only problem was me trying to change something to fix something that was not broken instead of just doing what I do best as a hunter, kill stuff. 

I went from 524 item level to 529 item level with that one piece.  Sweet.  When the time came to upgrade it, it was just a matter of logging in and killing a few bosses that were being chain pulled at the time anyway.  Kind of anticlimactic after such a long journey and a major let down for the ending of changing the epic cloak into a legendary one.  The entire quest felt like a journey worth doing, at the time, and the end just felt like a "kill 4 giant animals" quest.  Kind of boring.

2nd Hunter:

Stage:  Collecting Valor

My second hunter is a horde hunter and as my only horde max level character and a kind of broke one at that (only 29K) I never gemmed or enchanted anything but I did reforge.  I have no intentions of raiding with it because I do not have a raiding guild, so why go out of my way.  I can still go well above and beyond your average LFR player even without investing in those things and that is all this character will ever do unless someone horde wants me to transfer to their guild and help me catch up, then I will be raid ready for them because I will have a reason to be.

I handled its journey to the legendary cloak the same way as I did with its gearing.  No real rush.  No raid team I need to be my best for so I play the character once in a blue moon.   As it stands, I am 240 valor away from completing the collecting valor part of the quest line.  It is one of 3 characters I can potentially finish that part of the quest line with this week.

3rd Hunter:

Stage: Complete

This character was created on the same server as my main hunter with the intention of having a second hunter raid ready because, well, that is the only thing I am decent at playing.  I made him the same race but not the same professions because I wanted some burst on demand (engineering) and the ability to disenchant all that junk I get from killing rares and getting gear I no longer needed (enchanting).

As such I speed leveled him the way only I can, super fast, and I worked my ass off at 90 to get him geared and done with the quest line.  With a little luck he not only managed to collect the things faster thanks to catch up mechanics but he won both battle grounds on one try, something I can only say ever happens when I play my priest.  The biggest speed bump in the whole process was waiting 3 weeks for the new 3000 valor you needed to gain (at least it was not 6000 any more), once again I ask, why is that even still part of the quest line?  I believe I ended up going from 1 to 90 and having the cloak and a 562 item level in less that 5 days played.  But do not hold me to that, do not remember exactly, but it sure as hell was really lightning fast and probably was even faster than that.

When it came to the final battle, I had been there and done this before on a hunter, and a considerable less geared hunter at that.  This character blew it up so fast you would have thought I was killing a level 43 rare out in the old world and not a boss that was part of the legendary quest line.  Soloing the dread ship on timeless island proved a harder battle than this.

4th Hunter:

Stage: Collecting Valor

This is a really old hunter, but one I rarely ever played.  Just to give you an idea, it only passed 2 days played this week.  It is one of the three characters I have that will, if I play him which is the only one of those three I can assure you I will, finish the valor collection this week.

So yes, I have the intention of having 4 hunters with the cloak before expansion end.  This one, while alone in the world, I have a little more dedication to do, and because it is alliance unlike my horde one, I might even drag him in for some farm stuff so he can get a piece or two if I am not needed on one of my stronger characters or needed to tank.

1st Priest:

Stage: Complete

This character kind of got their legendary cloak without ever even trying to do so.  Yes, I am serious.  I would join guild mates for LFR to help them get a faster queue and just stayed for the run.  As such I collected a lot of stuff and moved along the line.

When it came time for the big battle at the end she handled it like a champ despite the fact she was not raid geared at all.  She was used just for LFR and on the extremely rare occasion she was needed to heal.  Her entire raid experience this whole expansion was a few normal ToT kills and healing the first 9 bosses of ToT heroic.  That is it.

She beat the healing challenge with little to no problem.  She is a disc priest after all.

2nd Priest:

Stage: Collecting Valor

The 3rd of three characters that could complete their stage this week.  However, being this character is so rarely played it might not happen this week.  Lets put it this way, this character has been on the collecting valor phase since before my first character even had the legendary cloak.  Yeah, I play it that often.  But I do intend to finish it off at some point.  Doing the quest line as a healer is easy.  Fast queue times, perfect healing spec for LFR, and for the battlegrounds, which tends to be the hardest part of this entire legendary quest line after the waiting to collect valor part on a character you rarely play.

Rogue:

Stage: Complete

All I can really say about this is, WTF?  I hate playing a rogue or more so melee in general, I am not very good at it, and some how my rogue always ends up in the middle of everything I do.  It was my second 85 in cataclysm and my 3rd cloak recipient in mists.  For a character I do not play that is rather, odd.

I met the final battle in woeful condition.  I had not really gotten any better at playing a rogue and my gear was in desperate need of an upgrade.  Lets not even mention the fact I had two 502 weapons and an item level lower than my hunter did when it got there.  But at least I knew how to play a hunter and knew how to work its toolkit.

I wiped a little over 20 times if I remember correctly but with my skill level on a rogue and my gear level it was wearing, it is roughly what I would expect.  I did not really think I could beat this challenge in low gear on a character I am not all that good on but beside being always grumpy this elf has another fault, I am stubborn as a mule.

I kept making adjustments and moving my binds, just for this fight alone, until I was basically, I believe, getting the most I could out of the gear I had when it all fell together and I got the kill.  Unless something changes, which I doubt it will, this will go down as my most exciting memory of mists.  Because I beat a challenge that I had to work hard to do.  Sure, a better player might not have had the problems I did doing it with 502 gear, but for me, it was the most exciting experience of the expansion on the class I hate playing the most.  How funny is that?

Monk:

Stage: Runestones

Slowly, very very slowly, this character is moving forward with it.  The problem for this character is that I usually queue for a few LFRs at the same time on the rare moments I play it, and I will do the first 2 or 3 that pop up and then drop from the rest due to time reasons and I never seem to get the ones with guaranteed drops.  It has been on the runestone collection part since I had quit LFRs some 6 months ago.

Even if I never get to the goal of having every class having the cloak, which I would love to do, this one will get it so I can do the tank part.  Even if I have to put together a pug for a normal ToT clear, which actually might be a better idea.  Maybe I will do that.

Mage:

Stage: Secrets

My mage is one of those characters that slowly, and I do mean slowly is working their way to the cloak.  They do ToT wing 3 whenever I feel like trying to get a few secrets.  Why not ToT 4 or SoO 1 which has the guaranteed one?  Because I am in no rush, and I like using the coin on the second boss in ToT 3 because I am still trying to get that pet.  Over 200 total tries over all my characters so far now and still no pet.

Let me also make a little side note here for people that might interest them.  ToT 3 is the absolute best LFR to run.  I see better DPS in it than I do in SoO 4 or any other LFR for that matter.  All I can think is a lot of the better players are doing it to get their quick valor and a chance at not only that pet which sells for a ton, but the last boss also can drop a pet that is pretty powerful for pet battling.  I see better groups in ToT 3 than in any other LFR, even now and even if you do it on a monday, which I did it last night, and had 3 people over 400K in there.  Name one other LFR you ever see that, even early in the week, and I saw those numbers a day before reset.  As long as one tank can live through the maze (if you even get to that phase) this is an easy run.

Shaman:

Stage:  PvP - 0 Wins

If I could ever get past the PvP part of the quest line finishing the legendary quest line on my shaman will be a breeze.  It is a healer which means fast queue, I am good at playing it, which means I can be that 1 healer you always get that rules to LFR by doing 50% of the healing, and the last challenge, if doing it on my priest was any indicator, will be easy when this character gets there with a much higher item level than my priest had.

Druid:

Stage: Secrets

My poor druid should have had it already.  As a matter of fact it would have done the tank challenge if it had been there because it is a bear first and foremost and that legendary undertaking would have been done with a long time ago.

My druid just kind of got screwed that the catch up mechanics were not added until SoO came out.  Remember, I do not do the LFR on tanks so my druid only did normals.  It tanked a fair bit in the first tier and managed to get almost all the required sigils.  I think I needed 2 of one of them and that was it when ToT came out.  But ToT did not drop sigils like it does now.  If it had, by druid would have been done with the quest line already.  I tanked ToT a lot.  More than enough to get those last sigils, all the secrets and all the runestones during that time.

But it did not turn out that way.  I ended up getting the last sigils tanking SoO and then got hung up on the PvP part of the quest line. Which I just managed finishing.

So now I can finish it just tanking SoO, easy enough right?  But I do not want to wait that long, I want to speed it up which means I want to do the ToTs.  So there was a choice, use my kitty one button macro, which is more than ample to still be an LFR hero, but is boring a sin, or switch to healing which is something I had not done in forever.

When looking at it, DPS waits for an hour, healer waits for a minute, there really was not much of an option.  While doing it as DPS would have been stupid easy thanks to the feral one button rotation macro, the wait would drive me crazy.  I built myself a healing set and I am going to push this character through it as fast as I can along with the 4th hunter that will be doing PvP this week most likely.  So the question is, will my bear or my monk be the first tank to do the challenge?  My monk only need 6 runestones.  But it has only needed 8 for many months and only managed to get two in that time.  And also has to wait the DPS wait.  My druid very well could beat my monk to the cloak.

Do you want to know the best part of doing this on my druid?  When I get to the point where I need to beat the four celestial bosses I won't need groups.  I've already soloed all four of them on my bear.  Who needs a group when you are a bear god.

Warlock:

Stage:  PvP - 0 Wins

My first character through, the hunter, had issues with the PvP part.  My rogue has slightly bigger ones as did my monk and my mage.  Only my second hunter and my priest went in and had a good time of it.  But none of them can hold a candle to the nightmares my warlock has when he sleeps at night and thinks about PvP.  Do you know how horrible something needs to be to give a warlock nightmares?  Yeah, it is that scary.  Maybe some day.  But I really fear my locks luck in PvP.

Paladin:

Stage: ~the sound of crickets~

I do not even know if my paladin has turned the letter in yet to start the quest.  Seriously.  That is how little I have played it this expansion even if it has been max level for about a year and a half.  I just have not had any motivation to play it.  As I play as prot, and it seems to take forever to kill stuff, and it always seems like I am on the verge of dying, it is part a learn to play issue and part a gear issue because I have none.  I think the fact is it the only original class still sporting a green piece or two explains the gear issue.

So why did I list this higher on my list of characters that will get the cloak than the other two that I have not yet listed?  Because it has a secret weapon just waiting to be used.  That weapon is called healing.

Although the last time I healed on my paladin was while leveling in wrath I did maintain a complete healing set all throughout cataclysm despite never even having a healing spec.

In the grand scheme of things healing is just easier in the LFR.  Faster queue times, less disrespect as long as the bosses go down and people do not die, and of course, a much easier time pugging into other things because people always need healers.  That is how my healer got ToT heroic progression despite never having healed normal.  They asked, do you know how to heal, I said yeah, but I haven't been needed as a healer this tier, invite sent.  You do not even need to know what to do as a healer, just know how to heal and you get an invite.

So if I ever decide to work on my paladin the journey will not be that hard or that long.  If I put the effort into it and anyone that knows me, and read my rogue part here, know that when I set my mind to do something, I do it no matter what.

Thanks to timeless gear, and some tanking gear to help boost item level, I can easily get into SoO healing in LFR today if I wanted to and with some luck gear might not be too far behind.  That is why the paladin is on the list before others, because it can heal and that makes it attractive, even if I am out of practice.  Lets face it.  If you are willing to spend a few minutes reading, and asking a few people the right questions, learning the basics of how to play any class in any role is not really hard.  So I have no worries about it, I can and will be a capable healer, when the time comes.

Death Knight:

Status: Sigils

I think I am sitting at 10 of one and 2 of the other but being my main DK is a bank character I don't play it all that much.  I can easily DPS in my tank gear because I tank in DPS gear.  While it would not be perfectly itemized for DPS, it will be more than ample for LFR to do so in such gear.

If I ever wanted to wait the DPS wait, and play the role of melee, which I hate, it would not be a big deal on this character because I do not really need a different set of gear even if different trinkets would be nice, but with the timeless pieces I can have at least one DPS trinket.

Warrior:

Status: Sigils

I got a few sigils from the one time I tanked SoO normal.  That is all this character has done all expansion raid wise.  What is holding it back is I do not have a weapon to "pretend" to be arms or fury.  Unlike all other classes like my monk, druid and death knight being able to DPS in their tanking gear and my paladin having the ability to heal if I choose to, my warrior is screwed.  It is either tank or get myself another weapon and different gear.

This is why he is at the bottom of the list.  However, and this is a huge however, if I really wanted to, with the desperate need for tanks that is always going around I could just start pugging the starter raids, ToT and maybe even flex SoO to get my legendary quest needs while getting to stay as a tank.

Not sure how attractive this is as an option, but it is an option for sure.  I am not really a pug type person any  longer, I grew out of it, and it is rare I am ever in the mood to do so.   But I would prefer an organized group pug over the LFR any day.  I will not tank the LFR, but I would be willing to tank a pug.  Because this character has no other option but to be a tank, it is last on my list of getting the cloak.

A Legendary Undertaking:

I will absolutely finish what I originally set out to do from the start and complete all four of the celestial challenges.  The tank one is the only one I have left and with my monk so close and my druid healing now even if I get frustrated with the LFR again I believe I can still get that done.

So what is next on the challenge road once that is done, and I do consider it done as it will be.

I want to get the legendary cloak on at least one of every class before the expansion comes out. Will I have enough time to do that?  Will I be turned off by the LFR again and give up?  Who is to know, but having something to aim for is always fun and it is what we play for.  We play for a goal, no matter what that goal is, simple or complex.  For now, this is my legendary undertaking.  I want to complete the legendary quest line on all the classes.  I will not be the first to do it, I am sure hundreds have already, but I will still have something to keep me going through this horrible drought of content.  At least until I quit the LFR again. ;)