Made for the Role

All the talk about tanks and healer and damage dealers lately has me thinking a lot about the roles and the people that play them, or don't play them.

Do you believe that each person is made for a role?  As if there is a role that best suits them to play.  I am not talking about skill at playing it, anyone can become skilled at anything given enough dedication and determination, so skill at the role means nothing for this post.  Well, not nothing, but saying someone is skilled at doing something does not mean they were made to play that role.

At the beginning of last expansion we were in need of a tank, as in when are we not in need of a dependable tank, and I recruited a friend from real life to come tank as I knew she had a geared and leveled tank and she was skilled at playing it having had played once since vanilla.

As it turned out we ended up not needing her on her tank as we ended up picking up a few of them but suddenly had healers feeling the heat from the massive healer hell that the beginning of last expansion was and I went to her and asked if she had any characters that could heal.  She said she had one but it was not 85 yet.

I helped her level, taught her all I knew about healing, and geared her up as best I could through randoms, craftables and the such and in no time she was ready to heal.  Having never healed before she stepped in and was healing as if she had been doing it all her life when in fact this was the first time she had ever even attempted to heal.  Even when gearing her up she did not heal.

A few weeks later and she was ready to claim the spot as the number one healer on the team.  Her reaction was spot on, he choices always seemed well thought out, her numbers amazing.  She was a healer, she adapted completely and she adapted quick.

It was then that I got the shock of my life.  She was playing on an old system that she could not use addons on.  This means she had no custom UI, no healing addons, no DBMs, nothing.  She was doing that good at healing through natural ability only.  Wow, just wow.

She was meant for the role.  That is what I mean about being meant for the role.  You don't even try, you are just good at it.  Anyone can learn to be good at something, but to be good at something naturally means it is something you were meant to do.

Do you believe that people are meant for certain roles or certain classes?

I love being a hunter, but does that mean I am meant to be one?  And if so what spec is it that I am meant to use. 

I always played a hunter but it wasn't until MM was the spec that became the raiders choice that I actually started to become a good hunter, raiding wise.  I changed to MM and was instantly topping the charts.  All without even thinking.  I could be talking on vent, not playing attention to anything I was doing in game and it seemed that everything just fell into place.  Not only did my DPS go up but so did my raid awareness as odd as that might sound.  I guess it was because I did not need to think when playing MM so my awareness of other things seemed to be heightened.

Perhaps I was meant to play MM.  Perhaps it was just that at that stage in the game my play had just moved to the next level and it would have not mattered what spec I was playing but I tend to believe that for me when playing a hunter that MM is the spec I was made to play.

I've always believed that any decent player, any real gamer, could play any class in any spec and do well at it.  But the made to play it theory goes further than just being able to do it.  It means to be able to do it with ease, as if it were natural.

While MM seemed to be that way to me as a hunter what is there to say that I was not made to play a druid healer or a monk tank or what have you.  There are the classes and roles we like and we tend to believe that because we like them because we are made to play them because we happen to be good at them and enjoy doing it.  But that is not entirely true as I see it.  Just because you are very good at doing something and really enjoy doing it doesn't mean you were made for the role.

I think the vast majority of players never find the class and role they were meant to play.  I am not even sure I have yet and I have dabbled in every spec and class in the game at one point or another.  I just say it is the hunter that I am meant to play because I am good at it and I enjoy it and have been doing it so long.

What if I could be so much better doing something else?  What if I have not found the role for me?

What if all those people that refuse to play tanks or healers were actually made to play a tank or a healer but because they refuse to ever give it a chance they never find out.  They could be the average player, even the good player, but they would excel at doing something else because that is what they were made to do.

Every person has strengths and weaknesses and those all go into being made for a role.  It was like when I took the job as a raid leader.  A job I never waned and a job I wish I could pass off to someone else.  But I was told that it was something I would be good at.  As it turns out, while I am not some great raid leader or anything, I do have the natural tools to be one and it comes without even trying.  Managing people is a skill, just like everything else.  Would I say I was made to do that, absolutely not, but I am sure the person that gave me the job things I was.

Goes to show you that you don't even need to enjoy doing sometimes to do it well.  Sometimes it is just who you are.  And maybe they saw something in me that I never did.  In the end I understand why.  Whenever I do a raid, if I assemble it or not, if it is a pug, open raid, LFR, you name it, given time I will always end up taking control of the group while not even trying to do so.  Because in the end, that is who I am.  I am a leader by nature for as much as I despise being one.

Do you believe people are made for a role, or a class?  I do.

I just wonder how many of us never really find that place.  We never see that, while we are good at something, there might just be something we are naturally better at.  Like that warrior tank that had been playing since vanilla that is now a shaman healer.  They were a good warrior tank, but they are a better shaman healer, because that is the role they were meant to play.

I absolutely do believe that every person has something they will just excel at naturally.  But then again, I also believe that anyone can excel at anything with enough time and dedication put toward it.

Do you believe that you have found the role made for you?

I believe I have, as long as I can play an MM hunter, which sadly I can not now.  Oh well.

The Perception of Time

Have you ever had a moment when playing where everything seems to move in slow motion?  I'd imagine PvP players get that feeling a lot.  Where things just feel like they slowed down to the point where you have so much time between making decisions that you make them easier, faster and more situationally accurate.  Where your perception of time just seems skewed.  Where you get that feeling that you are "in the zone".

I wonder if anyone else ever has that feeling when playing.  I have three distinctively different experiences with the perception of time while playing.  Each seems to be predominant when playing a particular role but that does not mean it is unique to it.

Slow Motion:

I get this feeling mostly when filling the role of a damage dealer.  It usually comes at the point where I have finally "got it".  When I found that perfect comfort zone where I know when to use my cooldowns to get the maximum out of it, have mastered all the movement and mechanic moments, and the game starts to come into complete focus.  That "in the zone" moment if you will.

That is when it seems the game starts to move in slow motion.  Where I have that extra second to hit the right ability or think about it, even if I am not thinking about it.  It just begins to feel as if I have the time to think about it, a lot of time, because everything is moving in slow motion.

I have had this slow motion moment while tanking or healing but not as often as I do when filling the role of a damage dealer.  It seems to be that this is a predominantly damage dealer feeling of the passage of time for me.  Perhaps that is because that is the role I am most used to playing or the role I am most comfortable filling and thus why it feels as if I have all the time in the world to do what it is I do, shot things with arrows in the back of their head.

Quick Passage:

Although I first started healing in wrath it wasn't until cataclysm that I first experienced the quick passage of time phenomenon.  I believe it was healing magmaw, my first healing of that expansion.  When the fight ended I felt like saying, "but it just started".  I honestly just did what I did and never even noticed the fight take place.  I was "in the zone" with my healing bars, my healing spells, and doing the dance.  I never even noticed that the fight was taking place.

I healed here and there throughout that tier only ever experiencing that once again, doing chim.  Only on those two bosses and I do not know why only them.  I thought it was just something about them that made me have that feeling.  That is until dragon soul came out and it seemed that on nearly every single fight in there I had that feeling as if I missed the entire fight.

The feeling of a quick passage of time is actually kind of nice as a healer because you are always in a fight against your mana pool and the faster you can end the fight the less likely you are to run out of mana.  I had thought, during dragon soul because I was at a nice point with my mana, that it was the reason everything felt like it was moving so fast.  No worries about mana just meant to heal, heal, heal.  But what about magmaw?  If you healed at the beginning of cataclysm you will remember it was a bit of a nightmare when it came to mana, even more so when you are a part time alt healer, so that can not be it.  It was just an "in the zone" feeling.

Slow Passage:

The slow passage of time, as in, will this fight ever end, is a feeling I get more often when I tank than with any of the other roles.  While I have had some moments like that while healing and dealing damage the times I usually get that feeling is when tanking.

When you hit that three minute cooldown and then have to wait what feels like 15 minutes for it to come back up.  It seems as if everything is taking forever to happen.  Waiting for that next big move you need to use a cooldown for and you wait, and wait, and wait, but it seems like it is never coming.  It is supposed to be cast every minute but it feels as if three minutes are passing between each one. 

This is not a slow motion feel, do not get it confused with that.  Everything feels as if it is moving at normal speed, well, except for the things you are waiting for.  Waiting for something that is normally a 6 second cooldown surely does not feel like six seconds, it feels like twenty six seconds.  Real time passage, except for the cooldowns.  That is the feeling I get when tanking most often.

In a way it does work to my advantage, it is an "in the zone" feeling even if it is quite awkward at times.  It is like you are monitoring the cooldowns on everything and being they take forever to come up you always know exactly when your cooldowns are up, when the next big hit will come, when you will be ready to do what you need to do because you are watching those timers like a hawk.  As the saying goes, it takes longer for a watched kettle to reach a boil.  Perhaps it is something like that.

The Roles We Play:

While I do not know if I am the only person that has these feelings with my perception of time I do believe I might have an idea why I perceive time as I do in these cases and it has to do more with how I view the roles.

Damage dealers feel like they are moving in slow motion because I view them as something that requires quick thinking to maximize the damage I can put out for each global.  So time slows in my mind when I am "in the zone" so I can better react and do my job.

When healing I always feel as if I am in a battle against my mana bar.  It is my job to keep health bars up while keeping my mana bar from falling too fast which would keep me from keeping the health bars up. The faster my mana goes down the more frantic my job becomes.  I am always watching bars.  Health bars, mana bars, cooldown bars, and having to make snap judgements on what is best to do and when.  It all happens at a bam, bam, bam, pace that it is like one constant fluid motion instead of a whole bunch of little ones.  Me against the mana bar and before you know it when I am "in the zone" it happens as if it were all happening at once, giving me the feeling as if there is a quick passage of time.

When I tank I think of it as my job is to do everything in my power to keep the mobs attention while I stay alive and hope the healers can do everything else that I can't in my endeavor to stay alive.  The most important things for me to know all relate to timers.  What time I need to taunt and to be sure I am available to do so.  What time the boss will do his abilities I need to watch out for.  What abilities I have to decrease that damage and when they will be back for me to use again.  How long it will it will take me to build rage, or runes, or holy power, or chi, so when I need my ability it is there.  Everything is an issue of what time it will happen and how long it will take.  So it seems as if everything time based slows down to the point were it feels like forever while waiting on it.  A watched kettle if you will.

Is This Unique:

I doubt it.  I am sure there are many people like myself who have something happen sometimes in the game that effects our perception of time.  It is just not something I hear people talk about often, if ever. 

In the end every class has the same amount of time to do a 5 minute fight.  They have 5 minutes.  For my damage dealer it seems like it is 5 minutes, but in a slow motion 5 minutes, so I can better maximize my damage.  For my healers it feels like it is two minutes, because I am frantic with keeping everyone up and that is all that matters.  With my tank I spend so much time watching timers for everything that it seems like it takes 8 minutes to do a 5 minute fight because when you are watching those seconds tick they seem to always tick a little slower.

I think it is human nature and it is not something tied to playing the game or the roles.  I just relate to them in that way because that is what I am talking about at the moment.  It is like hearing a baseball player that is on a hot streak talk about how he is "in the zone" right now and he is seeing the ball better.  He is doing well because it is like he is seeing the pitch in slow motion.

No matter what we do we are always looking to find our way "in the zone" because we always do better when we are there.  Who is to say what the good zone is however.  Is seeing things in slow motion better for everyone?  Is the feeling of fights taking forever or passing so fast a bad thing or a good thing?

I know I can not be the only person that has ever experienced some of these feelings in game.  Feelings where I know I have a skewed perception of time.  But I never think of them as a bad thing.  I always think of them as a good thing.  When I am in the middle of a fight and suddenly it seems like everything just started to move in slow motion I can't help but think... I got this.

Has Active Mitigation Worked?

When I first heard about the change to active mitigation I was worried about it and how it would work out.  For those that do not know what active mitigation is I will give an over simplified expansion. 

Old school: Gear for dodge, have 30% dodge all the time.  New school: Use a button that gives you 60% dodge on demand, but it is not always available.  Yes, there is a lot more to it, but that should give an example for the people that know nothing about it.

When I heard about this the immediate thought that passed through my head was that tanks in randoms would never use their active mitigation buttons and because of the lack of passive mitigation, the avoidance that is always there, they would get hit for a ton more.  I also felt that this would add a level of difficulty to tanking that would make it annoying to play for many or impossible to learn for some.

Everything I worried about turned out to be true but not one of those things was "the sky is falling" sort of bad I was expecting it could turn out to be.  At least for random content.  As I do not pug all that often and my guild tanks, which I am one of, all know how to play, the only representation I can say I have seen is from the LFR and LFD and I make my judgements based on that.

From my own tanking experience I am loving active mitigation and that is no surprise.  I knew I would.  I said I would.  I was looking forward to it.  It gives me the ability to choose my play style a great deal more when playing my tank and that is fantastic.

Now when I tank a dungeon I can base how I play on the group I am with.  If I am with a solid DPS crew, everyone over 100K, and a fairly capable healer, I do not need to worry one bit about using my active mitigation.  Perhaps a rare cooldown here or there but that is it.  I can chain pull until my heart is content.  Yesterday was the perfect example.  We did 4 heroics in 40 minutes.  As I said before, heroics are faster than scenarios. I find that kind of humorous being scenarios are supposed to be the super short things you can do faster than a heroic.  But that is another story all together.

It helped I was in a guild group where everyone could do over 140K and the healer was an excellent healer.  Heck, if she DPSed too we might have gotten it down to 9 minutes per run instead of 10.

See, that is the beauty of active mitigation.  My DPS, and as such, my aggro generation, was a lot higher because I did not have to worry about mitigation.  That old 60% dodge my druid used to have because it was passive and I needed it was now all allocated to DPS and aggro generation stats because I no longer needed to stack up stats for mitigation, I now had a slew of buttons for it.

When I run I see the group and what they are capable of at the beginning of the run.  I've had runs where I was using all my cooldowns all the time because things were going down too slow or the healer was new and/or woefully geared and there is nothing wrong with that, we all start somewhere.  I've had runs where I had to do a mix and match of a little extra DPS or a little active mitigation.  Tanking for me was no longer what it always had been.  Stand there and get beat on and hope not to die.  Sure, I always contributed by doing damage but that always felt more like it was bonus damage, now if feels like it is part of the group.

It is fun running scholo and challenging the DPS in my guild to beat me.  There are two rooms in there I can easily break 300K on, while still using my active mitigation, and it is fun to be able to do damage and avoid damage all at the same time thanks to having all my abilities at by beck and call.  Before the fun of a pull like that was, can I survive it.  Now the fun of a pull like that is, can I survive it and beat all the damage dealers while doing it.  Darn survival hunter did 520K DPS and beat me. :(

It turned tanking, for me at least, from a one trick pony into something that can be done on various different levels.  Work at full mitigation mode, full damage dealing mode, or a mix and match of both depending on need.  Tanking is really active now because you are always adjusting to the needs of the situation.  I am loving it.  So from a tanking perspective if I am the tank, yes, I believe active mitigation has worked.  I am enjoying tanking more than I ever have.

From a learning perspective I think it does make tanking a little more involved.  Check that, a lot more involved.  Avoiding damage by using abilities has become as important to a tank as using abilities to heal or deal damage are to healers and DPS.  No longer can they just get by letting the system handle their avoiding.  Not saying they could before in some content but for a majority anyone could put on tank gear and made sure they were gemmed and enchanted and reforged for avoidance and they would be good to go.  Not so any more because of active mitigation.

However, this made questing as a tank better.  Tanks learn to use their cooldowns while questing to keep themselves alive so it becomes more habit for them.  Even more so then in the past.  In the past those cooldowns were oh shit buttons, the help I am about to die buttons, the only use them for the big hit buttons.  Now with active mitigation and the fact there are so many available for all tanks and many are on short cooldowns they become part of the every day for a person out in the world questing as a tank.  They learn to use them on their own because it is worth using them.  It is no longer something you save until you need it, you use it before you need it so you will never need it.

While there will still be people, many I am sure, that will have issues grasping it, active mitigation is much more user friendly to learn because it is something you do, not something that is just there.  So yes, tanking is a lot more involved now which makes it more complex than it had been but those cooldowns are more useful which makes them part of the every day game play for players now meaning they are more likely to learn what they are used for.  So in this case, yes, active mitigation has worked.

How about teaching new players to tank?  How about knowing how to tank but not having any tanking gear?  Thanks to active mitigation anyone can become a tank now, if a person knows how to rotate cooldowns and what they do.

You could be in 100% DPS gear.  A few lessons and some easy content like a heroic or two and I can turn any damage dealer into a tank.  They might need a tank weapon and a shield if they are a shield tank but they can tank as good as anyone else in all DPS gear now.  At least for content like a heroic.  All thanks to active mitigation. 

Where it used to be a tank with tank gear would have 50%-60% passive mitigation, even when first stepping into a random, now they might only have 15%-20%.  So before, losing 60% hurt a ton and that is why you really needed tanking gear to tank but now losing 20% is not so bad, as long as you keep that active mitigation rolling and control your pulls.  It gives tanks more chances to get geared because if you are using some DPS pieces it isn't really going to kill you like it could have before.

That means, as I see it, active mitigation has made it easier for someone to step into tanking, to make that transition.  They do not need to completely assemble a new set of gear, just switch specs and read up on it and you should be fine.  So in this case, active mitigation has worked.

About the only issue I have with active mitigation thus far is as a healer.  Anyone that has healed a random and had a tank go from 100% to 0 in less then the time it takes to cast a flash heal will tell you that many tanks completely ignore their active mitigation.  One little button could make it easy as sin, you could stay near 100% all the time with some heals and one cooldown but without it you are dead in less than 2 seconds.

It has happened to me twice while healing a random so far this expansion and I am sure it has happened to people that heal more often that I dozens of times.  Tank pulls an entire room, I start to cast my heal, they are dead before the heal comes off.  Come on people, you do not even need to use a big cooldown, anything would have kept you alive.

Looking for raid is a place where you can really notice the tanks from the tank wannabe that can't even be bothered to read their abilities or figure out what active mitigation means.  You do not even need to be a healer to notice it.  You can tell just watching life bars which tanks are really tanks.  Wow oh wow I wonder why so many people that are not tanks queue as tanks for the LFR when the wait time for a tank is insane.

So as a healer I do not like active mitigation.  Before active mitigation I used to have a saying about DKs.  DK tanks are easy to read if they are good or bad.  I can tell on the first pull how the entire run will be based on how much damage the tank takes. 

Being DKs were the only ones that used active mitigation for the most part back then it was easy to tell.  It used to be when I saw a DK tank I would watch that first pull and then decide on if this was going to be one of "those" runs or not.  Now it is every tank.  Before achievement mitigation I could heal any tank, no problem.  As long as they had tank gear on, there would be enough passive mitigation that even if they did not know how to use any cooldowns it was no big deal. 

Unless you have an OP group, like my guild group was, you can not get away with a tank never using any cooldowns.  If you happened to be a fresh healer starting out, just hit 90, and you have a crew of damage dealers that can not even top 30K, the fights will go on for a long time and if the tank does not use any active mitigation it is wipe city.  That is just the way it is.  No way around that. 

Even with my OP group for that content, I still used barkskin on those pulls.  I still popped a FR if I took a damage spike.  I still made sure to use my dodge trinket and dodge cooldown.  So even when I say I did it without cooldowns, I don't mean without without.  I just mean without concentrating on them outside of the first few seconds of the pull when they were still needed.  So even when doing it with all the right parts, the tanks still need to use their active mitigation and as a healer you will notice instantly if they do not.  There just is not enough passive mitigation to get by any more. 

So from a healers standpoint, active mitigation has not worked.  Sure, when used it makes my life a dream but when not it is a nightmare.  From a healers perspective I would like to see constant mitigation passively because there are too many tanks out there that just do not know what active mitigation is.  However, I will be first to admit is not nearly as bad as I was expecting.  It does seem like the majority of tanks, at least the ones I have run into, have embraced the active mitigation model.

All in all I would have to say active mitigation has worked to make tanking fun.  But I am still not that impressed with it as a healer.

Do you think the active mitigation model has worked?

The High Pressure of Being Adequate

The expression actually should be using the word excellence but I will settle for adequate because although I like to believe myself a good player and surely capable of more I strive to be at least adequate.  Excellence is reserved for a very few and I am definitely not one of them.  With that said there is nothing holding me, or anyone in game, back from being adequate in everything I, we, do.

For those that might think doing adequate is doing badly I would like to share the common definition of what adequate is.  Adequate means of satisfactory or acceptable quality or quantity.  Sufficient, enough, suitable, appropriate or fit are some synonyms.

If you enter a random group and can say everyone in it did adequate you had an excellent group.  How often do any of us really have the chance to say that they had a group were everyone did their job appropriately?  Damage dealers doing a fair amount of damage for their gear level, following mechanics and avoiding the avoidable.  A healer keeping people healed to the best of their ability and if they are really over geared keeping them full at all times.  A tank that can pull more and keep aggro and maintain rolling cooldowns to make the healers life easier while contributing a fair deal of damage as well so things move along quickly.

I try my best to do what I would believe to be adequate in every thing I do.  Like doing dungeons on my shaman as enhancement after hitting 90 yesterday in quest gear.  I had only DPSed one raid fight in all of cataclysm and two dungeons over that same span of time.  I would have to go back to mid wrath to call on my experience playing enhancement on a regular basis.  So I spent a small amount of time looking around.  Viewed noxxic, icy veins, and a few forums.  Not a lot of work put into it, but enough that I would not have to call on memories 3 or more years old knowing that things have changed. I wanted to make sure I could at least be adequately prepared for the task of playing the role of a damage dealer in the randoms I entered.

I actually looked this all up before I started leveling so I would be able to get those quest mobs down in a timely manner.  I refreshed my memory once I hit 90 because, lets face it, DPSing quest mobs and DPSing group content is not exactly the same thing.

I went into one group with a feral druid, in gear better than mine, was doing 1/3 of the damage I was doing.  Another run had a druid, balance this time, that I was doubling single target and multi target.  Another had a healer that had LFR, valor point, and some real raid gear that could not keep up with what seemed to be like minimal AoE damage as I know it was being I have healed it before myself.

All these people were not doing their job well.  They did not reach the high pressure of being adequate.  Not asking for good, great or excellence even, just adequate and they could not reach that level of play.

I do not ask people to do great, I surely did not do great myself.  On the last fight of the day from my dungeon runs I did 32K DPS.  In my 441 gear I am sure a skilled enhancement shaman could have made me look like a beginner with those numbers, but I did over 25K and for that I believe I did adequate.  Yet we had a damage dealer, one that had me by at least 20 points in item level, doing 11K.

The way I look at it, I am not a damage dealer on my shaman, or my priest who was a previous healer to hit 90 and do the dungeon crawl as a DPS while gearing for heals, and if I can make the effort to at the very least not make myself look foolish why can't everyone else?

Is the high pressure of doing adequate too much for the average player?

As someone posted here I will repeat it.  I am not the average player.  I looked up my rotation online which immediately put me leaps and bounds over that average player.  So I did something the average player would not do, but I wonder why the average player would not do it.  If anything I should be the average player, that is why I describe myself as such.  I do decent or try to and I read up on how to do it.  That should be the average player.

In the day and age of the internet and so many different games and cheat guides of tip books and information everywhere about everything it surely can't be because people do not know there is information out there.  Who of us has never bought, or at least looked at, a help guide when they got a new game?  I used to buy the brady guides when I bought the new final fantasy game.  It was not something out of the ordinary as I am sure most people did the exact same thing I did.

Now, years later, with the internet and everything at your finger tips, there is no reason to ever play a game without picking up a few tips and tricks for free by letting your fingers do the walking and typing a few words into google.  Even if it was something as simple as "how the hell do I play an enhancement shaman" I would be able to find a few good links.  You do not need to be knowledgeable enough to type "enhancement shaman 5.1 rotation" to find it.

I do not consider it pressure to look for this stuff.  It is just the same as me looking in my brady guide to see where I should go or if there are any items I can pick up early on that will help later when I run through the final fantasy game.  I want those tips and tricks not to impress others, no one is going to ever see me playing FF.  I want them to do the best I can, for me only.  And that has carried over to warcraft.  I do not want to do over 25K when I come into a dungeon in quest gear to make myself look good, I want to do it so I can feel I am contributing and thus making my life easier.  The better I do the easier it makes it on me, making it easier on those around me is just a byproduct of it and not really my intention at all.  I couldn't care less about them.  I just want to do the best I can do to make things easier on me.

Why doesn't the majority of the player base do the same thing and try to make their own lives easier by doing at least adequately?

Is it the high pressure of doing so?

I do not take it as pressure to try my best but perhaps I come from a generation of gamer that expects more of themselves and as such more of those around them.  I might not always reach the level I consider adequate, as I said I am not great in any sense of the word, but I do try to always give the best I can and contribute in a meaningful way to the objective of the group which in this case is killing internet dragons.

Many say the reason so many do so badly is because the game fails them and I can see where they are coming from.  You can level easy enough without any real knowledge of your class.  You might die a lot, it might take longer, you might need to group for things you could have done on your own, but you will get there in time.  The game does not teach you.  But in the same breath, the game does not need to.

As I mentioned we are in the information age.  Even before the internet was as big and open and full of information and as much help as it is, there were help guides for games and people routinely purchased them.  All games, even the single player ones, have things in them that you might never notice without the guide to help you along and all games you would be better off reading the guide even if you are great at picking things up on your own as there are often little things in them that you would never find out on your own.

So it is not uncommon to need to look outside of a game for information on how to play the game well.  So while we can blame blizzard for no in game teaching, it is not really their fault.  The looking outside of a game for information precedes wow and even the internet.  They are just sticking to the gamers code.  You can get by without the guide, but the guide will make you good.  Just like one of those final fantasy games.

The biggest difference is that with something like final fantasy if you did not get the guide and do not know the tips and tricks you can still get it done, it will just take longer.  And that is where I think the problem comes in.  Warcraft is not a single player game.  You can not move at your own pace.  You can not bring your character to level 99 when you could have beat the boss at level 30 without much effort.  You need to do better because there are others depending on you to be, at the very least, adequate.  That is where the pressure comes in.  People expect you to do adequate.

Should the game change to the point of final fantasy, to make it so people can over power it to remove the high pressure of being adequate?

I do not think that is a viable option.  This is not the type of a game that can let people choose their own difficulty level like that.  It is not a single player game.  You do not have the option of looking at outside information or not like you do in single player games, you have to look at it.  It is part of the game.

I think blizzard should add the information on their main page.  They should have a link on the skills page that will open in a browser that shows people their rotation and priority.  They still treat the game as if it is all one big secret and only the people that want to really know should know.  As if they are hiding the location of the holy grail or something.  Perhaps it is their desire to not tell people the best way to do things because then their whole talent tree thing or collection of skills you will never use are useless and it makes it seem like there are even less options in game.  Something anyone that reads those guides already knows anyway.

This is not the type of game where buying the brady guide is optional.  Everyone should buy it.  Everyone should read it.  Everyone should have instant access to it at all times.  They should not leave it up to people that do not read to figure out which abilities tanks should use to mitigate the damage they take.  They should not leave it up to people that do not read to figure out which heals proc buffs that will help them with their next heal and which are huge cooldowns they should save for big damage moments.  They should not leave it up to people that do not read to figure out in what order people should hit their skills to get the maximum DPS out of their characters.

There is already enough in game they leave up to the people.  They leave the ability to grind gear to the people.  They leave the ability to choose role up to the people.  They leave the ability to follow mechanics up to the people.  They leave the ability to get out of the fire up to the people.  They leave so much up to the people that all has a huge impact on whether they are adequate or not, and all those things they can not influence.  They should make every effort they can to influence the one area they can, abilities and how they work and when to use them.

That one little thing is what separated me on my shaman from some of those horrible players I saw when I ran.  Like I said, someone with more skill could have done leaps and bounds better than I did in my gear but I read my rotation and attempted my best to follow it and those damage dealers in better gear that I was doubling and tripling did not.

Just a little reading made the difference.  If they had done so those runs, which were not bad mind you, would have been so much faster and so much easier, if they had just spent a few minutes out of their game time to look up a rotation and make an effort to emulate it.

Your skills, what they do, when you use them and in which order they work best is the easiest part of the game.  It is easier than mastering mechanics, it is easier than working as a team, it is easier than finding a team, it is easier than reacting to random elements and it is even easier that moving out of the fire but only if you read how to use those skills.

So why is the easiest part of the game the hardest part for the majority of players?  It is the difference between doing poorly and doing adequately.  Is it really that hard to check out an article or two outside of the game for some information.

Is reading and comprehending what you are reading the high pressure of being adequate?

Tanking Almost Seems Fun?

For the fun of it I decided to run a random on my paladin tank yesterday.  No one in guild wanted to run so I stared at the queue for a few moments trying to decide if I would be willing to run alone.  I don't tank alone.  I kind of fear it.  Okay, not kind of, I really fear it, the people in it that is.

Lets add to the fact that my paladin is still in half DPS gear, has 318 pants and a 305 trinket.  Also my tanking experience at 85 on my paladin is limited still.

After a few moments I figured what the hell, let me run it alone.  I pop the window open and see that tanks have the baggie, surprise surprise right?  I almost hit the button right away when I noticed it was for a Zul.  While I was willing to take the chance I most definitely am not willing to take the chance at a Zul.  Not in that gear, not with my limited tanking experience as a paladin tank in this expansion.

What the hell is wrong with the system?  Why was I even allowed to queue for a zul?  I did not have all tank gear, I did not have a lot of experience, I did not even have all blues.  This is the reason the item level system is not a good way to judge if someone is capable of entering a dungeon.

I know better.  I know my 347 item level is not a "good" 347.  There is a huge difference between what I am wearing and what someone in all 346s that are actual tanking pieces are.  Not to mention my huge 128K life is not exactly a nice sponge for the damage is a zul.  Who cares about my 70% avoidance when I could still go down in 2 hits should I get unlucky.

See, I know I am not Zul ready.  Don't count on any one else in the game to actually look at things the way I do.  Most people will queue up as a tank in the same situation and then it becomes your problem because "the game says I can do this".  Hate to break it to you Mr. "the game says I can do this", the game is wrong, you can't and even if you can with a great group, this is a random group so odds are it will not be a great group.

I switch to a regular heroic and there is no baggie for regulars.  I call bull crap.  If I queue up I will get in instantly, which means tanks are needed.  Happened to me many times on my healers.  I queue up and am in instantly yet I get no baggie. 

When there is a baggie option I have sat for over 10 minutes more then a few times.  So making me wait over 10 minutes means I am in need and it deserves a baggie yet me getting in instantly means I was not needed? 

No wonder I rarely agree with how blizzard does thing.  I think logically, they do not.  I would have guessed the other way around.  If I wait 10 minutes that means I was not needed.  If I get in instantly that means I was needed.  I guess my logic fails.

Either way, I am about to queue up solo when someone in guild whispers me and tells me they will switch.  Cool, do not need to go alone.  Then another person switches.  So I have a DPS warrior and a healing shaman to go with me.  Now I feel a little more comfortable and it was not like I was going to get the baggie anyway.

We get in to HoO and on the first pack the hunter traps one, the shaman frogs one and I get the other and drag it to the big guy.  Not sure who did it but both the frog and the trap are broken nearly instantly.  See, this is why I hate pugs. 

I am not getting any heals either.  I can hear the shaman on vent taking and sounding as if what she is saying was actually said 2 minutes ago.  I know what is happening, lag for her, big time.  I grab up all four, start using word on myself for heals, throw a lay on hands on myself at the last possible moment, stay alive just long enough for three to go down, the forth one was still up with just the lock and the hunter standing.  I release and come back to help but they down it.  Nice work on their part, even if the lock was only doing 5K, they got it done.

The healer apologizes for the lag and restarts her computer.  Amazing we did that with no heals really.  It is not like we had epic DPS or epic tanking in my case.  We just scraped by, but we made it, that is all that is important and that was actually quite fun.

Second pack and pack in front of the boss go off with no problems.  We end up wiping on the boss because the healer DCs.  The lock drops group, no biggie, their 5K DPS wasn't exactly going to make things easier, no great loss.  I tell the shaman on vent I am kicking her, if she can not stay connected she is hurting us more than helping us.  Yes, I kicked my own guild mate because they DCed.

I only kick people for DCs really.  I am not a serial kicker.  I've only kicked one person in a random for being "bad" even if I have run across 100s of bad players.  Goes to show you how bad they really where if I kicked them.

We get a new healer, another shaman, and a new DPS, another lock.  I sense the game wants us to run with this set up no matter what.

New lock seems to be doing less DPS then the other one did. 4K, woohoo.  The hunter is doing 16K and the warrior is doing 10K and I am sitting at 7K as a tank so it is no big deal, we more then cover for the lock doing 4K.  Thing is, the lock actually needs things from there.  Sure, there is no excuse for someone doing 4K in a heroic, even in quest greens, but if you can handle it, let the person tag along and get some gear.  I only really bitch about DPS if things are not going down fast enough causing problems, if they are in all epics and still only doing 4K, or if they complain about everything.  I don't care if you are doing 40K DPS, if you are going to be a whiny little bitch please be a whiny little bitch in another group, thank you very much.

The new shaman healer informs us that they just hit 85 an hour ago.  I did not even bother checking their gear.  Lets roll with it.  Who cares, lets have some fun.

We do pretty well over all.  The healer has a few moments where I know they had to be sweating big time, like on the guy after the four mini bosses, they were oom pretty quick there.  That boss and the last one can really be a major issue, even after the heroic nerfs a long time ago, to healers in just the 329 minimum.

The healer lost a few people here and there but no wipes with them.  I had to use all my cooldowns and help with healing with lay on hands a couple of times and holy radiance a few times as well.  Hey, that is what cooldowns are for, might as well use them.  We did a full clear being both the shaman and the lock needed some gear.  As luck would have it two pieces did drop for the lock and I saw the lock's DPS go up after each piece. 

The lock even did 9K on the last boss, but that boss does have a damage boost so that is not completely telling.  They went from 4K average at the start to 6K average at the end.  They improved.  See, that is why you don't just automatically kick low DPS unless you absolutely have to.  If they are not hurting the group and you can cover for them, let them gear up and get some time in to learn and hopefully you will end up with one better player in game instead of kicking them and ending up with one bitter player in game.

It was not a great run but I had some fun doing it.  In the end it was even just me and one guild mate so maybe, just maybe I might be willing to run alone.  We decided to do another run and one of the DPS in guild wanted to come just for fun.  He is our main druid cat which means he is completely raid geared, so at least I knew the run would have the DPS needed. 

He can carry the spot of all three DPS most of the times.  This means it is challenge time for me.  First pull in LCoTV, trash of course, he shoots up to 70K DPS and of course I lose a few mobs to him but everything goes down fast enough that the healer was capable of keeping him up.  They tell him to let me get some aggro first with that DPS.  I tell the healer that next time she should let him die.  That is how I teach him to chill on aggro when I heal.

He pulls 38K on the big guy there, I never have any aggro issues holding that however even in my, compared to him, crappy gear.  Have to love having DPS like that along, it makes everything so much easier.

Funny side story is that there was a hunter in the group at the beginning, all 391 gear, no kidding, when we first zoned in the cat made a comment that this would be a killer run with him and this hunter being how decked out the hunter was.  After each pull and the cat doubling the hunters DPS on every pull the hunter would grumble something in party chat.  Not actually say anything, just some random letters.  We where joking on vent that he was probably pissed that a cat with not even 1 391 piece was doubling up on him, triple at some points.  The more the cat did, the more random letters he did in party.

Out of nowhere he just dropped.  We were moving fast, things where dying like lightning.  There could only be one reason why he dropped like that after all his grumbling.  He is someone that apparently DPS means everything too and he must have been pissed he was getting out DPSed by someone in normal firelands gear when he had all heroic firelands gear.  Actually, looking at his DPS, I wonder how the hell he managed to even get into a heroic raiding guild.  I was doing more DPS than him before I ever had my first 359 piece on my hunter.  15K with the 15% buff and all 391 gear is actually worse than the 4K lock from the previous run that faked his way to 329 to get into a heroic.

Back to me vs. kitty over mobs. Over all the only real aggro issues I had the whole run was on that first pull and a few of those fruit tossing guys that kept throwing at others.  No so bad.  Of course the cat did wait three seconds before jumping in after that first pull.  Seemed like it was long enough for me to get a threat lead so his 70K AoE spam would not pull off me.

He did die on the last boss and the healer, a druid as well, did not rez him.  He joked on vent that this was the healers revenge.  It was no big deal, we downed the last boss without him, just took a little longer.

I actually had fun running the heroics.  Sure, the second one ended up with two guild mates and the first one had one but as long as I get some half way decent people I think I would be willing to do this alone.

Not sure if it is just that I am getting move confident having tanked all these things on a few other characters already but it seems as if I have more power as a paladin tank.  Paladins always had that feeling about them and it seems even more so now then ever before.

Even with the deaths here and there, the wipes do to DCs, the 4K DPS and 5K DPS locks, the repetitive nature of the dungeons, and not being with all guild mates, I still had... fun.

That just does not seem right.  Not right at all.

Paladins seem really OP when tanking heroics.  More than my druid, warrior and DK.  So if I am going to tank a heroic, for now at least, I am going to use my paladin.  For raids, warrior is still the way to go, warriors are meant to be tanks and that is the venue they where meant to be in.

Just like I had come to the conclusion a while back that Shaman are the best 5 man healers in the game I have come to the conclusion that paladins are the best 5 man tanks in the game.

At least from an ease of play standpoint healing as a shaman is easy and tanking as a paladin is easy.  For me at least, and as I always say, people are better at what they are most comfortable with.  Guess I got comfortable with them in 5 mans faster then I did with my other healers and tanks.

So comfortable I might actually be willing to dabble in randoms solo as a paladin tank.

Be afraid, be very afriad.

The Accidental Tank + A Funny Flashback

A few weeks ago a guild mate who is extremely well geared asked me if I would be willing to tank a normal for him.  Admittedly I was wondering why he would want to run a normal but I figured, what the hell, maybe he just wanted a really fast run for enchanting materials.  It is not unheard of.

Anyone who reads my babble here knows I hate tanking heroics.  Mostly because DPS suck and I hate dealing with them.  So I would not willingly queue up for a heroic.  A normal however is a different story.  I was tanking and my guild mate was a paladin healer that has the skills to probably solo heal a few of the current raid bosses.  Yes, he is really that good.

We land in GB.  To make a long story short, we down the first boss, just me and him up because all three DPS get hit by the charge and get themselves killed.  That is when I notice this is heroic and not normal, by the loot drop.  Oh well, I am here, I will finish it. 

Second boss goes better. 

Third boss all the DPS dies by the time the dragon comes out. 

Just me and the healer together get the boss to around 10% when we get unlucky and the fire thing spawns right behind him and he does not notice it fast enough and he is too far for my charge to get to it so he dies.  Each time it had targeted him I just charged and mowed it down, each time it targeted me, he just healed me through it.  We could have two manned it if it where not for that.

He says he has to leave so we get another healer.  I think for a moment looking at the horrible DPS we have there and consider dropping myself but decide I will give it a try again.  The new healer asks if we can skip the third boss, so we do. 

We get to the last boss.  We don't down it.  One DPS never gets in the eye, the other two DPS never switch to adds.  You see why I hate tanking randoms now?  I hate the DPS with a passion.  It feels like 90% of them are horrible and a large portion of the 90% that are horrible are also stupid.

After we wiped, one DPS leaves and we get another.  I am sort of upset because the one DPS that left was doing the most DPS.  9K.  Now I was left with 6K and 7K.  6K and 7K with the 15% buff?  You have to be kidding me right?  These two people should not even be in a heroic.  Never the less GB. 

I am tempted to drop group myself.  Hell, I did not want to do a heroic anyway and these DPS are the reason I did not want to do a heroic.  I decide to stick it out for one more try anyway.  We have a raid in 20 minutes, so I'll at least stay until raid time. 

The new DPS is a DK, says he knows the fight, we head at it, we destroy him.  Thank you Mr. DK and your 25K DPS.  I would have been happy with someone that could do over 10K but I am ecstatic to have someone do over 20K.  Good DPS makes everything easier.  Hence the reason I say it is the most important role in the game.

A little later that day I notice the random baggie in my bag.  I did not random alone, why is the baggie even there?  I won't complain.  Free stuff is always good stuff.  I open it and it has a pet that I needed on my main.  Woohoo.  Now that is luck.  Getting a baggie when I should not have and then getting a pet and that pet being one that I needed.  Seems that I got rewarded well for sticking it out.  The DK was reward enough for me doing it in my option.  But I am not going to complain about free stuff I wasn't even expecting.

I personally think I would tank more if they gave me that DK every run instead of a baggie every run.  If they could design the game to give me three DPS like that DK I would tank every day all day long.  I don't need gold, potions, gems, and pets to make me run, I need good DPS to make me run.

So last night two of the DPS in guild where looking for a tank or a healer to queue up so they could get a quicker queue time.  I decided being I have been enjoying my bear a lot lately and I know they are both 15K-20K+ DPS with good CC that I will do it.  Even if the 3rd DPS is horrible, they would not really be needed being we were going to do a normal heroic and not a Zul heroic.

We land in deadmines, my first time there on my bear.  Well, not actually, for my first time there we have to take a trip back in time to when my bear was just a cub.

~the air begins to fill with mist as music begins to signal we are entering... the flashback zone~

The first dungeon I ever tanked on my druid was the weekend LFD came out and it was the deadmines.  Not the one we have now, the old one.  I've never tanked the new one on my druid but even if it is different it reminded me of my first time there, my first time tanking on my druid.

The run was already in progress just before the ship when I got there.  I come in to people fighting all over the place.  I help finish the mobs off and revive the dead.  The run is filled with rude people and stupid people.  You know the type, your standard pug people.

A lot of stuff happened that run, but that run in my mind will always be remembered for one thing.  The healer.  There was the requisite bad DPS every run needs, this one had all three being bad.  A hunter, a lock and a rogue.  As bad as they where, the healer was the one I will always remember.  The healer was the one that I will quote every time people ask me why I do not like to tank randoms.

On the last boss I pull and pick him and the adds up.  The hunter goes to get some mobs of his own.  The lock goes to get some mobs of his own.  The rogue does what rogues do, he keeps out of sight.  The healer is tossing heals on everyone.  The hunter, the lock and even the invisible rogue that isn't doing anything.  Everyone but me that is.

The hunter dies, I pick up all the mobs he had pulled.  I get all the mobs the lock has picked up as well.  I have three packs of adds on me and the boss.  A dead hunter, a near dead lock and a missing rogue and I could not buy a heal for the life of me.  Not sure why, but the healer is not healing me.

I pop out of bear to heal myself and the rogue becomes the sacrificial lamb.  Not sure why or how but he comes out of nowhere and grabs aggro on everything and get toasted.  Good for me, it bought me the time to heal.  Thanks rogue.

I round up all the mobs again and slowly get them down one at a time.  Popping out to heal once in a while.  When all is said and done I turn to the healer and ask them why they where not healing me.  They basically said they refused to heal me because I was hogging all the mobs for myself trying to be the hero.

A healer that won't heal the tank because they are trying to be the tank?  Interesting.

~the music begins to get softer as the mist begins to fade and you are returned to... the real time zone~

I tell the two DPS with me on vent about my experience here and they all are baffled by the healer not wanting to heal the tank because they where hogging all the mobs.  We laugh, we move on, the dungeon went fine.  I got achievements every step of the way of course being my bear has never tanked this before.  Come to think of it, my bear has never tanked anything this expansion really except for a few raids and a few normals and the ever so rare heroic (3 maybe) for guild mates.

The only boss that was any problem was the robot.  The only reason for that was because the melee DPS that was with the group never did it.  I told him, no worries, what is the worst that could happen, we wipe?  We all have to learn.

Good thing my two guild mates can rock it.  The guy sucked at the robot and all the fire adds where making it up.  I tell my guild mates to blow everything they have, I can not tank the fire adds and the boss for very long.  They go crazy and blow up the place.  We down the boss when it is me tanking three adds and the boss and the healer had to be in panic mode.  Every single time I've ever been there if even one add gets to the top it is a wipe.  We survived three getting up there with no deaths. 

The fire guys never made it past me.

They better not.  I am the tank, nothing gets past me.  That is my job.

My guild mates popped time warp, the fight was done before the buff wore off.  Two 30K+ DPS going off on that boss made quick work of him.  Holy crap I thought that was a wipe.  Once again, proof positive, DPS is everything in this game.  Any other group and that was a wipe 100% of the time.

When it is over I actually start to feel a little confident in my tanking but I freely admit that it was not so much me feeling confident in my tanking as me being confident with those two behind me DPSing.  If anything, I got to see first hand how well I can hold aggro.  Not even once did I lose anything, and with that type of DPS behind me, I was happy.  Not bad for a bear that still has 2 PvP items and 3 items 325 or less equipped.  Yes, I have tanked firelands with that gear too and did just fine. 

They ask if I want to do another and I say yes.  I think I am actually starting to like tanking randoms now.  Like I said, helps when you have good DPS behind you.  Good DPS makes the game fun for me to tank.

The queue pops up and we land in ZA.  Oh crap.  Queued for the wrong one.  I've never tanked this on my bear.  Not to mention, we will need all three DPS to not be complete tools for this to work.

I give fair warning to my new healer and DPS and tell them I have never tanked this on my bear but have on my warrior so I know the fights and how to tank them.

They are cool with it.  Then again, what where they going to do even if they where not cool with it?  They can not kick me, I am with two guild mates.

I tell my guild mates I will attempt but if I can not handle it I will drop group and they can continue without me, at least they are in with the instant queue.

We head out and surprisingly I am doing a lot better on my bear then I did on my warriors first run through.  Never lost any of the guys going up the hill.  Picked up every single runner and birds with no problem.  Maybe I can do this on my bear.  Again, helps when things go down faster thanks to good DPS.

First boss goes down with only one death, not mine of course.  A dead tank there would be a bad thing.  Can already tell the healer is not all that great.  We barely made it through the first boss and almost lost more than one person.

We walk across and the healer says AFK.  Someone must have stepped one step too close and started the three guys.  Oh crap, well, lets get at 'em.  I charge in and we start laying the smack down on them.  We get one down, get close to getting the second down when I go down and then all the DPS take a dirt nap.

Wipe, but at least it was not the bears fault, it was just a whoops moment without a healer.  We got one and almost two down with no healer.  Not to shabby if you ask me.

We go across and kill the two bears and then out of nowhere mobs come flying at us from what seems like everywhere.

You know those four mobs at the top of the steps?  The ones you need to walk up to the start the event where they walk down?  The ones that are behind a wall in another room basically?  Well, as we killed the second bear, the four of them came at us, outside of that room, to where the two bears are.

WTF?  How is that even possible?  It is not like someone could have accidentally tab targeted them and even if they did, they are behind a wall half a mile away.  They could not have hit them to aggro them.  How the hell did they pull?  Needless to say, wipe again.  At least they are at the bottom of the stairs now.

Not going so well so far.  At least the 3rd DPS is pulling 15K.  So I have three people over 15K.  Assuming there are no other odd events this will not be a problem at all.  No one expected things from half a mile away to come flying at us so none of us where really ready, so can't blame that wipe on anyone.  I did grab them all but they took me down faster then the healer could get a heal off.  Makes me think, maybe there was a bug and someone did not actually pull the other three earlier.  Maybe they came on their own just like the guys on the steps came on their own.

So far, it has not been a stellar first tanking adventure there on my bear even if none of it was my bears doing.

We get to the bear boss and this is where I suffer from some bear envy.  Why is his bear so much bigger then mine.  This is also where I become sure the healer isn't all that.  They are oom by the end of the fight.  Anyone that has ever healed that fight will tell you they love that fight because there is nothing really to heal.  A few heals here and there on the tank and that is it.  I once healed a tank that was in all DPS gear, gemmed and enchanted for DPS too and never went under 80% mana on that fight.

Either way, they where not great but they where at least capable of doing the job and I don't complain about capable people.

We go along the path to where all the hawks and the trainer is, two scouts end up calling help.  I pick everything up and we get it all down no problem.  I tell my guild mates they have to be faster on those.  Even if we handled it with no problems, there is no excuse for executing wrong.

Yes, I even act like a raid leader in a dungeon when it comes to my own guild mates.  There is never an excuse for not executing things correctly even if you can handle it.

Perhaps that is why I am so harsh in my opinions of who I run into in a random sometimes.  Even if I do take it easier on them than I do on my own people.

Dragonhawk guy goes down in one shot.  That is way better than on my warrior.  I think I wiped on that on my warrior at least 10 times before I got it down.  I guess the experience from doing it on my warrior helped me on my bear.  In the end, the bear is just a warrior, with fur, and fewer cooldowns and abilities.

The other DPS, ret paladin, had to use lay on hands on me or it would have been a wipe.  Second time he saved us.  A ret paladin doing 15K and with a brain.  I think I have seen everything now.  He used it before on the double bear pull leading to the bear boss as well.  Like I said, the healer was not all that good.  Thank god for good DPS and smart DPS.

Lynx boss, the healer manages to lose one of the DPS even with them in the healing totem.  I think you would have to actively try to let someone die when you have unlimited mana and they are getting heals along with your heals.  Again, the healer was not all that good.

The leather agility helm drops and I am beyond excited.  I let out a woot on vent and say, about time, something to finally replace my 325 helm.

My excitement ends quickly as the healer rolls need on it and wins it and then drops group instantly as soon as it hits their bag.   At least they revived the dead person before they did that.  I think they where just waiting as long as they could.  They saw I rolled need.  They knew I was new this content on my bear.  They knew that was my main spec as that was the spec I was running in.  They still stole my helm.

As I said to my guild mates on vent.  I don't so much mind losing it to them.  Maybe they are DPS main spec and only run as a healer to get faster queue.  They are not that good of a healer so it would make sense.  I did not mind they won it.  What did bother me is that they did not say anything about it and that they dropped group.  If they had asked, mind if I roll on that, I need that for feral, I would have said, go ahead.  They didn't ask, that is what upsets me.  They dropped group, that is what upset me more.

I really wanted that helm. Any helm, I have had such bad luck with helms.

We ended up with another healer, a very good one and went on to finish with no incidents.  With the exception of the two rather weird pulls that where not intended at the beginning it was quite an uneventful run.  Even the few mistakes people made like letting two scouts to the drums where non-events.

At the end of the run I was almost thinking that I might actually be willing to tank a normal.

Then I realized that the odds of me getting groups like that would be slim to none.  I went in with two pocket 20K DPS.  What are the odds that you will get that in a random.

I've healed and DPSed a ton of runs if you combine them all.  Only once ever have I been in a run that had two people over 20K (not including myself of course).  So while these runs made me feel as if tanking can indeed be fun and easy in a random setting it is still a matter of luck if it is.

I am not sure I am willing to gamble.  I can't even win a helm when I am the only person that should have been rolling on it.  What exactly are the odds I will always get at least one 20K DPS that knows what they are doing and are not just about the numbers, never the less two.

So I was an accidental tank a couple of weeks ago and it worked out well.  I was an accidental tank running a Zul I did not intend to and had no problems.

A few acceptable runs are not quite enough to shake off that feeling I still get in the pit of my stomach when I think of tanking a random.

What happens if I get a healer that does not want to heal me because I am hogging all the mobs to myself?

While I might be warming up to tanking randoms some and I am really looking to play my bear more now I don't think I am quite heroic ready yet.  I can tank raids, but random heroics scare me.  For the time being at least, the only time I tank will be when I am the accidental tank.

Get 'Em Tanking

Like most specs and roles tanking has a varied degree of difficulty.  Depending on what you are tanking in what form of content and who you are with tanking can be either super easy and boring or exciting or stressful and annoying.

A newer DK tank in my guild was saying on vent yesterday how he still refuses to tank Zuls because they are too hard.  To which one of the other guild members pointed out, he has already tanked 4 bosses in firelands for an alt run last week and if he can tank firelands he can surely tank Zuls.

I then chimed in to support the comment made by the new DK and explained that I have tanked 100s of raid bosses over the years and still do not tank randoms.  Randoms are a horse of a different color.  You can not compare raids to heroics.  Raid tanking is much easier.

He wondered how "lower" content could be harder then "higher" content.  I explained it as simple as I could.

In a heroic, random heroic that is, you never know what you will get.  You could end up with DPS that could not fight their way out of a paper bag.  You could end up with DPS that feel like they have to flex their epeen so they do not care about kill order, aggro, or CC. 

You could get a healer that is a not ready for prime time player.  Or a combo of DPS that don't move and a healer that does not have the mana to compensate.  Or maybe a healer that just straight out can not heal the damage coming in on the tank or ooms almost instantly from bad spell choice.  Random heroics are indeed random.  There is also no control over what happens or who you get.

In a raid you will have a designated kill order, people will follow it, they will not try to flex their epeen as much as they will try to do the best they can do to make everything go smoother.  There is also a much larger sense of accountability in a raid setting, one that is absent in randoms where people can act like jerks without worrying about their reputation.

The DPS is usually hand picked so you will not run into people doing 5K.  The healers are hand picked so you will not run into healers that run out of mana 20 seconds into a fight.  You will have a better array of buffs, you will have a set attack plan, you will usually have a designated leader and you have an offtank for trash. 

That is a huge thing when compared to a heroic, where trash is usually 100 times harder then the bosses and DPS always seem to aim for the mob you have the least aggro on.  For some strange reason it seems like in randoms if a DPS gets aggro they like to run to the healer, perhaps to get heals, who knows what goes through the minds of idiots, and not run to the tank.  This will usually mean the DPS dies and the mob then locks on to the healer killing the healer and thus the wipe is now well on its way.

Raid tanking can be downright boring.  That is something you can rarely say about heroic tanking.  Heroic tanking is almost always exciting and not always in a good way.

Once I explained what he meant by saying that he was still afraid to tank Zuls the other person understood completely and said, I guess I don't blame you then.

I've said it before and I will say it again.  No matter how easy the content is, it is only as easy as the people around you will let it be.  In group play you could be the best player in the world but when surrounded by horrible players then you too are horrible.

I've heard people say that tanking is the hardest role in the game.  I've heard people say that tanking is the easiest role in the game.  What it really comes down to is where you tank, and who with.

I consider tanking to be the easiest role in the game and not by a slim margin, it is the easiest role in the game by leaps and bounds over anything else you can do.  The reason I say that is because I do not tank randoms.  I tank raids.

Tanking difficulty is directly connected to those around you.  Keep decent people around you are you might just fall asleep tanking.  I've had a tank tell me that not so long ago after I dragged him into BWD for the first time some months back.  He had never done Chim, so I explained it and said, don't worry, it is super easy.  When the fight was over he said, you where not kidding, I almost fell asleep there.  I said, welcome to the world of raid tanking.

Being tanking difficulty is directly connected to those around you it makes random tanking most likely the hardest part of the game.  Normally easy content is always complicated when you add random people into the mix.

What it boils down to it mindset.  Whereas healing and damage dealing both need a mindset and a skill level, tanking is more about the appropriate mindset then it is about skill.

I've seen some horrible tanks that have the right mindset for it do well.  They do amazing things with seemingly little or no skill.  It is because they have the mindset to deal with chaos.

Good random tanks and PvPers are the same.  They excel in chaos.  It is their mindset that sets them above the others doing the job.  Sure, skill does play a factor but without the right mindset your skill means nothing.

Healers and damage dealers look at everything in a rational, organized, logical way.  The adaptive mindset to chaos is needed less often for those roles and even when chaos comes healers and damage dealers can deal with the chaos in a logical way.

In a raid things are usually pulled in a planned way.  Thus rational, organized and logical.

If I, or that DK, ever want to tank in randoms on a regular basis we need to change the way we play the game.  Not the skills we have for the roles we play, those are fine.  We are going to need to change the way we think.  We are going to need to develop the mindset of chaos.  Organized chaos if you will.

How do you train the minds of the players that look at everything as black and white.  As right and wrong.  As rational, organized and logical to have the mindset of dealing with chaos?

How do you get 'em tanking?

Or more importantly, get them into the tanking mindset of organized chaos so they can be random ready.

You're Not Worthy - Arrogant Bastard

Arrogant Bastard Ale

The choice of PuG tanks all over Azeroth

Hello, I'm Your Tank

You are what you drink

Be an Arrogant Bastard

Drink Arrogant Bastard Ale

Are you worthy?

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."

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.