2009 in hindsight

Yeah, I know, I was given a Christmas present by Tam and should perhaps work on that subject since she was so nice and all, but the servers just went down as I was levelling my priest and I don't have any good angles of attack yet. Without further ado, here's a meme I stole:

What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I pugged raids, tons of them. This brough upon me some severe sanity loss and I don't think I've recovered yet. I realized that the task of leading PuG's is a very thankless one. I tried going the hard line, cause we all know that dictatorships and slavery gets shit done, and I'd seen too many wishy-washy PuG's with no proper leadershi(t)p to want to be like it. We all also know that dictators may make a few people happy, and pull the effort in the right direction, but they are still despotic bastards that do what they like, and generally end up dead. So yeah I've fallen out with a lot of people and I'm beginning to suspect it will always be like this. Much as I like there are fundamentals to my personality that I can't change and the friends that see through it are very good friends, and the people who can't stand it (they shouldn't have to stand stuff in the first place) distance themselves with good reason. I'm a very honest, outspoken and superlative person (stuff doesn't plain suck, they suck with the power of the biggest black hole in the universe with me) and sometimes that leads to me being an ass.

Oh and I also tanked, and did elemental DPS on my shammie. Both were fun. I think 2009 can be seen as the year when I started healing on him seriously as well, and that was also very fun.

What was your favorite new place that you visited?

This has to be Ulduar. The boss fights are very fresh and unique, the instance itself is enigmatic, beautiful and hard enough for the level of me and my guild. Karazhan, Ulduar and Icecrown citadel shows that Blizzard have some really good game designers. Trial of the Crusader was a bit of a letdown, although the mechanics are sort of interesting still. Granted, we haven't tried many hardmodes and they change things for the better, so I guess the interesting stuff is there, but well hidden (hardmodes are HARD).

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

Proper raiding progress - Trial was, as I said, very uninteresting and we killed all the bosses the weeks they came out except for Champions (took us a while to figure out the style of the encounter) who took us a week extra. Ulduar was halted by the summer - our guild went from 25 mans to 10 mans and we've kind of stuck to it lately. We lost a lot of raiders and recruited mostly people with gearing needs and the summer was spent farming Ulduar and making progress there - I famously posted our first Mimiron kill here, and we did some tries at Vezax and ultimately Yogg before getting sick of it. With the advent of raid lockout extensions, we have new hopes of killing Yogg. Of course, it won't be the same since we will be in at least partial ICC gear when we do it, but the damn thing has to die. It's a matter of skill, not gear (some nutcases killed him wearing only blues) so I still think it's something we need to do.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Killing General Vezax pre-nerf, probably. I mean sure, we were a lot later than most guilds, but we did it on our own terms and proved that we are a force to be reckoned with. I can't take credit for it, but I was the raid leader both for the first Mimiron and the first Vezax kills and that felt very good as well. After this, we haven't really had any bosses that have offered us any problems (except, again, Yogg, who we have a total of not more than ten proper tries at, and by proper I mean with people who's seen the fight before and made it into phase 2 a couple of times - the other nights have just been accustoming new people to the fight) but I look forward to the new wings of ICC when they are released, because the first one was pretty damn awesome and I hope it will still feel challenging cause the fights are pretty dynamic.

What was your biggest failure?

Well, I'd like to say failing to kill Yogg, but I think my failure lies at a more personal level. I've gone from bad to worse when it comes to handling social interactions and it's probably going to take me a while to be the person I want to be, especially with the arrival of the new PuG system that you are forced to use every day on all characters (yeah I know, nobody's holding a knife to my throat but still). Jerks, chiefly from other servers, really bring out the bad in me. No good reason to brood on this though, I'm gonna level alts through Outland and hopefully that will bring back some of the fun this game lost recently.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I can't really remember anything in particular except our first wipenights in Ulduar-25. Progress raiding is what makes this game great, and wiping and practising and wiping and then finally getting that kill is hard to beat. The downside of this of course is that we went from steady 25 mans to farming Ulduar-10 over the summer, which seriously burnt me out on the game and made me a bit of a jerk towards people I like.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

I think that's pretty established by now...

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

Tam and Chas over at Righteous orbs always write interesting and witty things. It, together with my friends' WoW blogs, are the only ones I really read except news from like wow.com and the likes.

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

Paladin tanking is fucking boring.

Why Vorla doesn't blog more

I don't want to write inane incorehent boring stuff about how I just got my new epic whatever.

I want to write about serious stuff and important thoughts and shit.

And I simply have not had time, nor arsedness, lately to do so.

However, I got caught up in some shit over at Righteous Orbs again, so there'll be post(s) incoming, be sure of it!

Tanking meme thing

So yeah, some dude at that other blog did a tanking meme, so I decided to be no worse. Only problem is I have no friends to tag or anything, so I'm a dead end when it comes to memes. Without further ado:

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

As with my healing, I tend to jump in to fill spots in raid 10 mans or play the lead part in PuG's led by me.

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?

Avenger's shield. Ranged, tons of damage, slows, silences, AND bounces to two targets after the first one? Sign. Me. THE. FUCK. UP!

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?

I'm tempted to say taunts, since people rarely rip aggro off me, but that's true for most tanks (I hope) so I'd have to say... Hands. They are so situational and there's usually an easier solution than retargeting to cast (I don't think I've ever saved a raid by using a hand, to be honest, so that includes simply ignoring the situation).

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?

Right now, we have extremely good survivability and Effective Health coupled with good DPS (and threat, as paladin threat largely is our DPS * Righteous Fury modifier), all in one easily played package.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?

We are not as flexible as a warrior tank or druid but this is largely a quality of life issue. We rely on mana which sometimes is scarce (fight transitions will make Divine Plea wear off coupled with no healing to take advantage of Spiritual Attunement) and we can get silenced, but as long as we have mana for one ability (even our lowest threat moves) our snap threat is good enough that it won't be a problem.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?

Tanking a big-ass sucker of a boss that hits hard.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?

I'm well complimented by a druid or warrior that can fill the gaps in my toolbox. For the other meaning of this question, I enjoy tanking on my warrior a lot more than I enjoy it on my paladin, because of the aformentioned flexibility.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?

My paladin, easily. Stuck in a rotation, just one stun with a long CD, pretty lame debuffs and the fact that it's flavour of the month.

What is your worst habit as a tank?

Letting people die. Sure, they may deserve it, but there's nothing stopping me from being nice. I also tend to be pretty reckless, but I prefer wiping every now and then to meticolously planning each pull before going ahead and pressing that Hand of Reckoning + Avenger's shield macro. Also, surviving a big oshit pull after using a few tricks is a pretty neat feeling.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?

Slow people. I prefer things quick, and as we say in Swedish, "snappy". People at 60% who demand a mana break in a heroic will tick me the fuck off big time. If the healer is good to go, so is the rest of the group.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?

Nope. We are actually way too good. Simplicity of play and huge EH are too big advantages, and I hope Blizzard fixes these in Icecrown without either making all tanks bland copies of each other or simply nerfing us.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?

I mostly just use Recount to watch my DPS contribution. I've never been in a situation where survivability analysis has been important.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?

Paladins are not off tanks! We may AoE tank pretty well and easily (our normal rotation contains two abilities that affect 3/all targets around us, and one that affects all targets that are hitting at us) but our largest advantage is our silly threat and survivability against the ilks of hard hitting bosses like Steelbreaker.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?

Exactly how everything fits together. Divine Plea, the 9696 rotation and in what order to use abilities when grabbing multiple mobs just to name a few. Paladin tanking is easy though, almost way too easy.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?

EH if I had to choose. The stuff that will kill you at current gear and content levels is big, unavoidable hits (either through stuns or magic damage) and there is only one solution to handling those situations better: More stamina.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?

Death Knights. I have a general antipathy against the class so I haven't rolled one, even though I said I might one day if only for the lore things in the starting area. Their resource managment and different strikes are alien to me, but I know they can move stuff with Death Grip and that's what's important.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?

Aloft and Tidy Plates for keeping track of mobs and who they are targeting. Omen obviously, and Satrina's buff frames to help me track when Divine Plea has run out and similar things. Grid setup mostly to display who has aggro so that I can use my Righteous defence macro.

I have a Righteous defence mouseover macro, and a pulling macro (Hand of Reckoning + Avenger's shield) but that's pretty much it.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

A healthy mix currently. I'm not tanking any bleeding edge content so I'm entertaining myself juggling dodge and parry and activating socket bonuses (almost regardless) rather than straight HP stacking, mostly because simply going for Stam feels boring. I don't practise what I preach in this regard, but I can tank anything my guild currently can see without any trouble what so ever, so I don't see a reason to go even further up Health Pool Lane.

The art of Shaman healing

No, not really. This is some kind of non-meme (OR IS IT DUNDUN) I'm doing so I don't have to type a proper post.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Togtok, restoration shaman.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
I tend to jump in the occasional guild ten man raid every now and then. I also run VoA from time to time.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Riptide - it's instant, it's a HoT, and it triggers Tidal waves which is something I simply want to have up at all times. If I'm not rolling on the tank, I'm using it to snipe heal the raid. Yes, when I see incoming Prayers of Healing too. Just to smack some overhealing on that pesky Holy priest who thinks he's all that.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Used to be Healing wave tied with Chain heal but has probably been turned into Chain heal. I KNOW, it's the signature spell and everything, but I only ever use it on the likes of fights like Kologarn and Loatheb, cause people will be sufficiently grouped up for it to be really awesome. Raid healing is better done with Lesser Healing wave (boosted by Tidal waves of course) cause you have a chance to reevaluate the raid after each cast to see if something else has happened. 2.5 seconds minus haste is a long time to wait for a heal that may or may not be completely wasted or bounce the wrong way or be overwritten by those pesky Holy priests and their Prayers of Healing. Coupled with Nature's swiftness on fights with heavy, randomly incoming damage it makes for a good emergency heal for people in the danger zone.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Totems, Tidal waves and Bloodlust. We have similar throughput and longetivity compared to other classes, and we are versatile enough to work raid or tank healing as well as a druid or priest - we all need to spec differently to fully fill the two roles, but we can if we want to and have tools to do it with. What sets us apart is the totems that can be used to boost whatever setup, changed on the fly combined with the flexibility of Tidal Wave charges, and the overall überness of being able to give everyone a shitload of haste for 40 seconds.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
I'd say more healing tools, but the only one I can think of that I miss is a healing version of the mana tide totem. The normal one, even glyphed, is a bit weak to really make a difference, but a big AoE pulsing heal every two minutes or something would be awesome for XT style fights or to get the raid up to full while letting the rest of the healers relax.

That being said, having an array of a few more abilities that are marginally or situationally useful would be more fun, but we have all the tools we need to do the job well.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Out of pure habit I will answer main tank healing. I know, take me out behind the chemical sheds and shoot me. It's dead boring, but man, do we do an awesome job of it. Our on-crit effect, Earth shield (which adds oomph to glyphed LHW's), critting Lessers and hasted Healings waves respectively from Tidal waves which is triggered by Riptide all make us really good tank healers - damage reduction, a HoT that heals when it's needed, a HoT that smooths damage, good mana preservation by using the different heals depending on what happens - normal damage, use Tidal waves charges for critting LHW's, spikey damage, use the charges for hasted, big healing bombs. The Riptide consumption aspect of Chain heal serves well in some fights as well, with the raid close to the tank. You basically refresh it on the tank most cooldowns anyway so it will always be there for you, replacing a normal tank heal with a critting CH with the benefit of added raid healing. Shammies have been pigeon holed into raid healing for too long. Half our arsenal isn't used while raid healing damnit!

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
A healing druid really shines with a shaman. I don't have to waste a Lesser wave on people who are only marginally hurt, and I can bring low raid members up with hasted Healing waves while a druid is off HoT:ing everyone up.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
I reckon Holy priests, because they are so like us, with big vs small heals, a damage-smoothing HoT and damage reduction. We simply don't complete each other in the same way, but rather fill a lot of the same utility and versatility.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
I snipe heals. I'm horrible, I know, but I tend to be one of those healers that is the third or sixth healer (not necessarily in order) and watching five people doing the job you're supposed to help with just as well without you just isn't fun (not cause I'm not needed, but becuase I don't like standing around), so I snipe heals to keep myself interested.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
People who snipe heals, I mean seriously.

No, okay, I really don't know. People who stand in the fire piss me off regardless, but that's the closest I get as far as healing habits go.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Yeah. We may lack a huge toolbox, bubble damage mitigation, everlasting mana or massive throughput, but we can do any healing job without trouble. If someone dies, in our most die-hard raid healing spec we still have powerful abilities to keep the tank up.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
I flip Skada over to healing done (to roughly monitor the other healer's performance) and when the fight is over, I check overhealing, compare my ratio to the others (I usually rank high, very rarely highest, on healing done and very low, often lowest, on overhealing done) and feel smugly superior.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we are to be pigeonholed into healing the raid. Knee jerk reaction pigeonholing is disc priests and holydins for tank healing, holy priests, druids and shamans for raid healing, but I do not hesitate to stick a shaman on tank healing.


What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Shamans are not only about Chain Heal. This in itself has a few implications, such as using Tidal Wave charges, when and where to use Riptide and the everlasting dilemma of using big or small heals. Keeping track of Tidal wave charges, Riptide tick time, Water and Earth shield charges and totem timers can be daunting but they're all alleviated through use of properly configured addons.


If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
I sort of answered this already. I generally have a good throughput in healing done (I'm an old DPS:er, if I finish a fight with more than 0 mana I have not used all my resources - I've had raid leaders ask if I'm DPS or healer after fights cause I'll be cruising at some 1.2-1.5k DPS from shooting lightning while bored) coupled with low overhealing.

Haste or Crit and why?
I prefer haste while raid healing and crit for tank healing, but I maintain a healthy mix in my "standard" gearset.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
I think I have a fairly good grasp of all the healers, and if someone would lend me a healer of any class and point to all the important buttons I'd probably do a pretty good job with either of them, but I tend to raid lead and that takes understanding of all aspects of the game and good knowledge of what abilities each class has.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I have Healing wave and Chain heal macroed with Nature's swiftness for oshit-style healing moments, and I have a Earth shield refresh macro, but some patch broke one of my addons and I haven't been arsed to fix it yet so for now, I'm refreshing manually. Pretty easy still seeing as I keep Riptides on the tank even while raid healing.

I use Grid for raid frames, and mainly look there while raid healing. While tank healing I use my large target frames but keep an eye on the raid every now and then (when I'm bored) and snipe heals. I use Satrina's buff frames to keep track of my Water shield and use my unit frame addon for tracking Earth shield on my focus target.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I'm not spoilt with many gear choices but I do have a few replacements pieces I can switch in if I want extra MP5, crit or haste depending on the fight or healing assignment. My overall set is pretty well balanced as regards to throughput and longetivity, however.

The art of paladin tanking

6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...

Is that really the truth to it? Not quite. The 9696 rotation is the staple of any paladin tanking, but to think that there isn't anything else is to be severely mistaken. First off there is a constant consideration about where to start your rotation depending on what type of pull it is, and where to start it off again after say, a stun. Then there's the consideration of which parts to drop to interweave Hammer of Wrath in execute range, and while I can answer such questions when it's calm, it's another piece of gum when you're in the middle of a boss fight. Luckily the 9696 rotation fits together quite seamlessly even when you introduce another 6-second cooldown, or even when you need to start weaving in interrupts (there's three, though only two use the GCD) every now and then. It's pretty much failsafe and idiotsafe - even if you just mash everything as soon as it comes off cooldown, you'll be looking at decent survivability and threat still.

This is a reason for what irks me the most about paladin tanks. They are currently the Flavour of the Month because of their advantage in simplicity in play and greater effective health compared to other tanks (oooh, and built in Guardian Spirit). We have a slightly smaller toolbox (maybe not smaller, but a hell of a lot more situational and therefor it rarely sees use), but if you get along just fine with or without a protection warrior (who, arguably, has the bigger toolbox) then what's the problem? Sure, it may be easier to bring someone who has two two-minute cooldowns to cycle for Vezax's Surges, but 1. They nerfed him to the ground 2. External cooldowns, on-use trinkets and AD work just fine as substitutions for own on-use. Plus, you can glyph to get a 20% damage reduction cooldown as well if you want to. 3. That doesn't mean it's an insurmountable hurdle to pass by bringing something else.

Another area where paladin tanks shine is utility. We have it coming out of our ears, with Kings buffs, extra crit and the splendid Divine Sacrifice just to mention a few. The previously mentioned smaller toolbox consists mainly of our Hands, with Hand of Sanctuary most probably being the most useful one (very helpful for warlocks, who put out ridiculous amounts of DPS and only have one threat reduction cooldown), but Hand of Protection on the other tank to clear stacks of Impale after Gormokk is dead to ease the healers' load during the first bit of the Jormungar duo is not to be sneezed at.

It may well be a case of grass being greener on the other side of the fence syndrome, but I sometimes regret not going with my warrior for my tanking alt. I may well level him to 80 before Cataclysm comes (but make no effort in gearing) so that I may reach my goal of 5 level 80's by the time Cata drops (it used to be 6, then Blizzard announced that they would make troll druids a reality, which just makes me all giddy inside - trolls are after all the epitome of shapeshifting and animal worship - ZG, ZF, and ZA all attest to this together with Gundrak. Also, trolls are my favorite race of the Warcraft universe and has been since Warcraft II). For now, I will use my paladin and have fun while doing it. She may lack the mobility and lockdown capabilities of warriors, but when it comes to eating those big hits, she's just incredible.

New posts incoming

Yeah. So I kinda fucking neglected this place. I've also lately been on a huge-ass guilt trip for being an arse to a lot of people in-game lately, both random people not important to me and people I consider friends and important. Frantically grinding the daily even when you don't need any gear sort of fucks you up, apperantly. PuG:ing week in and week out also took it's toll and frankly, it wasn't beautiful in any way - I hope the person I told to "stfu and heal" will accept my apology and that the person from whom I ninja'd (yes, I bullied the raid leader into giving me stuff, that counts as ninjaing) the Anub caster shield will come around, even though the ticket didn't go through. What I'd become turned me off the game for a bit. A break was long overdue and we counted the amount of raids I'd done that lockout in /o and reached a two-figure number. While I can honestly say that doing 12 of 14 raids in a week isn't so horrible because you can easily reach eight by doing both versions of VoA, Onyxia-10 and Coliseum on two characters for a total time of maybe four or five hours, the amount of energy poured into drudging the daily heroic on two characters combined with the incredibly frustrating task of leading some 2-4 PuG's a week (I'd typically be the leader of the VoA PuG's and the guild CC-10 runs, and organised one or two 25 man Coliseum PuG's on top of that) for weeks on end will utterly and completely fuck you up. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't, and now I pay for that. It'd been worse if I'd kept it up with three characters.

Sorry for the language, but I can't think of anything else than "fucked up" to describe my current WoW-situation. Instead, I've been catching up on some reading (re-read some Pratchett stuff. Not constructive and it kept me from reading school stuff, but it's a 'not WoW' activity), getting back onto the university volleyball practises and generally trying to find my normal social life. I missed the first 'almost guild only' Onyxia 25 kill ('almost guild only' enough to make the guild front page) and I don't regret it one second - not only because I'd already downed the broodmother several times, but because I took a very good friend to the student's pub, where I had a burger and we had a few beers and caught up on stuff.

I went to the Coliseum ten man run yesterday, if only to keep in touch a bit and fill a spot. I got a new caster dagger for my mage, which makes me able to relax even more as that was one of few upgrades I have left. Overall gear stress really went away - this is what made me into a bully about the shield - the prospect of not having to care about gear for a bit was more interesting than the shield itself. I got on today (technically yesterday) to fill a spot in an Ulduar ten man run continuation. Background: We decided to give some new folks (hi Tam! Hi Iust!) a classic Absolution welcome introduction by dragging them through a horrible horrible scary raid, where they were sure to shit their pants and die, while the rest of us cruised through and were liek "lol we just totally sixteen manned XT". We've done this so many times, I think we should start using it in our advertisements.

Absolution! We throw you in at the Deep End™. Bring clean underpants.

Anyway, as a token of friendship we made an Ulduar ten for those people a couple days after the 25 man shock, where they could enjoy the more social atmosphere of Absolution and relax and learn the fights. Sure, ten-man is more individual responsibility, but it's so much easier to teach and learn in that environment, and wipe-recovery is faster, and with some rocket DPS, the bosses go down real quick and easy as well.

My trail of thought is fucked up. I was supposed to fill a spot in an Ulduar ten man today, remember? Well, said raid didn't happen. I got on a short while a couple of hours after giving up on that endeavour cause I had some auctions that expired (that totally sold, woop woop) and then went off again. I don't intend to get on until the raid wednesday, if even that. I know I have my cloth cooldowns coming off tuesday that I may or may not log in to craft. I'm at 60+ Ebonweave, 20+ Moonshroud (after handing 12 to a guildie) and 20+ Spellweave and don't need neither cash nor materials for any crafted stuff, so I don't see why I keep doing it, and as part of my 'reform' I intend to not hunt that cooldown. Not cause I in any way was obligated to do it before, just to prove to myself that I didn't keep doing them cause I had to, only because there was no good reason to not do it. I know I am not addicted in any way, but sometimes you may have to prove it to yourself and others - said others are probably the thing I am addicted to, if any - not game mechanics.

I was just gonna get on and tell you guys that eventually are reading that there will be posts, stemming from my extra time and energy, and the fact that I have tanked all bosses the game has to offer (except heroic Coliseum beyond Beasts plus Vezax and Yogg) on my incredibly pimped paladin tank (her gear, and Vorla's, came at a terrible price, as mentioned), so there's plenty of experience to pour from. Instead, here I sit pouring my heart out. Maybe I needed this more than I thought. More subjects include the noob (we brought him to Ulduar 25 man as his first raid as well, much sadistic fun was had), my thoughts on the gear system and the 'new' raid bosses in the Coliseum[sic!] and their fun and replayability in game design values, and maybe some thoughts about what has been known about Icecrown. Icecrown feels so much smaller now that Blizzard has already announced Cataclysm (which contains the most retarded shit I've ever heard of - they are truly destroying their intellectual property not only in the metaphorical sense but also in the literal).

With reassurance,

Vorla, Audacity and Togtok

Project Noob - The update

I haven't updated in a while, mainly cause of being busy at work but also from having a short break from WoW and raiding. At this very moment I'm on the last leg of this weeks marathon to reach level 80 on my paladin. My noob is level 52 now, and have been playing the auction house while having troubles finding good places to level. 50-60 is a drudge and I was blessed to do it with Recruit-a-Friend this time around.

I also haven't updated cause the noob expressed some interest in writing a piece of his own and I was kinda holding out on that. I also have made contact with another noob friend who is doing WoW tourism and asked if she would be interested. Apart from not quite knowing what to write about she sounded interested, so you might want to keep an eye out.

A few thoughts on "normal" servers

THEY AREN'T NORMAL.

Srsly. People on those servers were probably dropped on their heads repeatedly when they were infants. I knew I did the right thing, rolling on a RP server back when I started, cause I figured there'd be a smaller amount of idiots. I rolled on a normal instead of RP-PVP cause I didn't want to be ganked. After levelling a warrior to 60 and a paladin to 70 on a normal PvP server I can say that I was right about the idiot part, but wrong about the ganking part. I've only ever been ganked once, and that was just outside of Blackrock depths by some rogue who probably was just bored waiting for his group and I was at half health. I ganked a bunch of gnome warlocks while riding through Duskwood though, the class/race combo makes me rage. Otherwise I find little pleasure in oneshotting lowbies, since I myself wanted to avoid exactly stuff like bored 60's killing me just cause they could.

Instead, while catching up on professions and class quests I'd missed while rushing through the levels (RAF is silly fast), the orange text "CONTESTED TERRITORY" actually made my tummy tingle a bit with excitement. I had to be on constant lookout and I encountered similarly levelled Allies while questing and we'd have a standoff with both of us coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it, and we left each other be. Kinda pussified on a PvP server, but it represents the tension between the factions a lot better than "zomg a dorf must keel it". I may have had the upper hand some of the times being two toons at once (although I'd not be able to PvP effectively on both of them at the same time anyway, but the Allies couldn't know that) but it was still interesting.

Anyway, along to the stuff that struck me about the PvP server I spent some 100 hours the last couple of weeks on, Shattered Hand:

1. There's a lot of PuG:ing going on. The server's population is a lot smaller than Argent Dawn's, but there's a remarkable amount of PuG spam in trade. This leads to dirt cheap Runed Orbs, epics and enchanting mats.

Said PuG's do not advertise for roles, but classes ("need resto shammy, kitty druid" etc) leading me to think that they are doing "class runs" in other instances than VoA. Reserving gear is also very frequent - "LFM FL-10, Firesoul reserved" is common, as is PuG's where only a set amount of bosses (often the easy ones) are targetted. There is also almost always a gear check and achievement link requirement to join regardless if there's just a FL run or not. Orgrimmar bank roof is full with the people spamming trade, cause that's where they gather to do the gear checks.

People will even start their spam advertising, and keep it up for hours, while being the only person in the group. "LF1tank, 1healer, 2DPS HC VH". Quite the optimist - on AD, people go to LFM/Guild/Friends list when there's a last few spots to fill, not straight away. More often than not are groups of 5 DPS in trade going "LF2tanks 3 healers Naxx-10 be skilled have gear link achiv"

2. The trade spam is truly spam. People will copy/paste their message over and over and over again, and in a culture like that, the only way to make yourself heard is in turn spamming, contributing to the vicious cycle. Trade is not just trade - it's LF Arena partner, LFM, Guild recruitment and also a source of some entertaining bickering and accusations of ninjaing (people will come out of PuG's with BoE epics, go to a capital city, spam trade to sell it, and people from that PuG will show up in trade calling them on their ninjaing ways).

3. The economy on the server is, probably in large cause of 1 and 2, completely batshit insane. With ten PuG's to 25 man Ulduar killing 2-3 bosses and FFA rolls for the Runed Orbs instead of them going to a guild's gearing up efforts each night, they go for next to nothing on the AH. I fled Shattered hand with my warrior with 6 runed orbs that I paid 1200 for in total. The BoE epics are since long aquired by everyone who frequent these PuG's, and therefore they only run it again to get another BoE to sell for some easy gold, and since everyone is selling them, the prices are way low. At this moment, I'm waiting for a few auctions to sell (some things still sell well, mostly the stuff you can't farm by PuG:ing end game content - Netherweave cloth is well expensive for example), and before I leave, I might have three or four ilvl 213+ epics for my tanking set straight off the bat, just from money I earned while levelling and selling the stuff that dropped. Emblem of Valor bracers? 200g-500g. On AD they go for 600g a good day. Relics of Ulduar sell for 1g at most, 200-stacks go for 150g more often than not.

I also suspect there's a lot of gold buying going on, Ratchet is fairly often full of higher level guys just standing around, and once when I was transferring my questing from 1k Needles to Stranglethorn, there was a fucking queue to do face-to-face trades with some level 1 orc warrior with a name with only consonants in it. I stood around and looked in horror for a while...

The faction specific auction house will sometimes contain really low-level items for very high prices too - I don't know if this is a case of "I hope some idiot presses the wrong button" or a way to avoid sending gold in the mail (which Blizzard apperantly monitors quite close - I've read up on the subject cause it started to fascinate me) between farmer and buyer, but either way it's not healthy.

While I'm not entirely sure how gold buying and extensive farming by chinese gold selling agencies affect a server's economy, my gut feeling tells me it should raise prices, not dump them (more gold to go around to inflate the market), but I guess people just buy gold for their money sinks (Hogs, epic flying, mammoths and stuff) and that it doesn't make it's way onto the Auction house.

4. People have some serious issues with naming. I've become truly jaded - all of a sudden "tommypala" is a perfectly acceptable name to me. "Twofish" or "Toothache" might have their place on a RP realm since there might be a reason why someone would be called that in game, but next to "Angrymama", "Eranikús", "Drunkdrood" and "Steakheals" (authentic examples I just picked up) in the spam fest that is trade, and on top of that, in fucking Swedish, they are just widely out of place. I just cannot relate to this in anyway. Even when I was 16, playing the epic grind fest that was Diablo II, this kind of naming was fairly rare, here it's commonplace.

5. People will whisper and pester you about all sorts of inane shit. Being a mage in Orgrimmar leads to the occasional whisper on Argent Dawn - people can't get enough portals. But being pretty much anyone, anywhere on Shattered hand will lead to you being spammed by lowbies (I only remembered this cause I just got whispered by a level 16 rogue to boost him in SFK - I told him to gain a few levels and find a real group and play the game the way it was supposed to. Didn't go down too well.) asking to be boosted or wanting to buy your services killing some alliance dude ganking their asses. People will randomly whisper you asking for your PvP gear and if you are willing to boost them in Arena for gold. It's absolutely mental.

6. Related to number 5 - people are twinks. No exception. There's level 19's, 29's, 49's and God knows what all running around with ilvl 25 blues with Mongoose on them. This is the easiest to relate to - twinking and voluntarily staying at a lower level bracket may make for a more interesting game, I for one would never play D&D 4th Ed. above level 10 (or at least never above 15) for my everyday gaming needs so I can kind of understand it. This is very rare on Argent Dawn. I'll see one every now and then, but standing around in Orgrimmar usually only yields people's mains and bank alts doing business at the AH while Undercity, Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon City is shockfull of them.

7. This is barely it's own section, but people use Swedish in their spammages and character names all the time. Shattered hand does have a predominantly Swedish population and as such, it's accepted by everyone there, and the rest can just go fuck itself as far as the probably 15-year old Swedish population is concerned.

The really sad part is that the people acting like they are in their early teens probably quite often are in their early 20's and that my prejudice towards young people in part is wrong, and the people on Shattered hand simply are idiots in large.

It will feel so good to finally have all my alts on RP servers again (huntard and rogue on Steamwheedle will probably stay there for a long while, don't intend to play them again) and level with the soft embrace of Absolution's guild chat close by. I love you guys.

Tanking cherry popped!

So yeah, I just got out of Blackrock Depths after tanking my first instance. I feel like a noob all over again. And I love it. We did good, but in the beginning I just mashed buttons randomly (I read a prio list but my bindings were perhaps not that great) and managed to hold aggro just fucking fine.

So yeah. I was in LFM because I needed a group for Sunken Temple, for warrior class quest about some fucking feathers or something. And someone randomly whispered me asking if I wanted to come to BRD. Now, I remember that instance to be really hard, but I mostly ran it on my shaman with what was most probably undergeared groups. But I figured, how hard can it be? I outlevel the instance and I have decent gear in almost all slots, and can probably fill the rest while we are down there (I got a few greens and blues, not exactly something that's made me excited before but I went "Woo! New tanking shoulders!" out loud >_>.

I made sure to tell them that I'd never tanked before. Never tanked a warrior, never tanked BRD, never. They seemed fine with it and I figured it'd be OK since most people were around 55. Turns out all of them were Swedish (for some reason they all went SWE!? almost right away). We slugged ourselves over there, me and a priest got there first and started summoning people and in we went. I wanted to show how awesome I was so I chainpulled the miners that are in the antechamber thingie, making sure my rage was optimal and just generally being badass. Inside the instace things were about as easy except for one thing: THE HUNTARD. Yeah, a PuG with a stupid hunter, who'da thought. He kept pulling out of impatience when healer was low on mana and did not turn off his pet's growl. And the damn pet kept ripping mobs off me and kept taking damage and he kept nagging the priest and ret paladin to heal his pet. I swear to God, I had a full playing board of PuG bingo right there. We told him to turn the taunt off, he told us his pet in fact did not have a taunt. At least we weren't wiping so we made do with simply not talking about it anymore. We went around randomly first cause noone had the key (epic confusion throughout the run since there are a gazillion types of keys to keep track of) and the other four had never been there before. I felt big and manly when I walked around with only a vague idea about where the first three bosses were, but we did the Law circle thing and managed to progress. Turns out the hunter was 15 (he said he was turning 16 tomorrow when the paladin said he had to have a quick afk to eat cake with his grandma cause it was his 17th birhtday...), the priest was 29 and the warlock probably somewhere around my age (he called the rest "kids"). Go figure.

I noticed being rage starved pretty much all the time until I figured out the key: CHAINPULL MOAR. Not that I thought rage would be pouring in as fast as a mob looked at you, but having two of them beat on me only allowed me to do shield slam as often as it came off CD basically. Having figured that out, I reached tanking heaven when controlling packs of 8-10 mobs at the same time, moving them according to my slightest whim. Trying to peel off and kick my healer's ass? Not on my watch! Taunt! Shockwave! Fuck yeah ain't going nowhere bitch. Playing a warrior as opposed to a mana class is a completely different game, I got that figured out. But actually tanking, playing the threat game, it just blew my mind. The first group fell apart somewhere around us ninjajumping to the entrance to Molten Core and realizing we were stuck cause noone had the key.

Me and the priest found three new DPS and came back, made sure we hade the key quest and even though the PuG really sucked (worse this time, there was a impolite mage, a really stupid paladin (who was 48 so he had the biggest aggro range with hilarious results) who refused to stay close to me and a DPS warrior with a tanking complex) I stuck around because I was enjoying it so much. I still don't know if it was because it was something completely fresh or because I genuinely enjoyed tanking and will keep on liking it, but I will keep going until I find out. I befriended the priest and we've agreed to do Strat and Scholo someday this week. Will be nice to get some more tanking experience under my belt before I venture into Outland for levelling and the hopefully harder instances there. Still refreshed from the experience I ventured back to my home server, where people don't have guild names that are "potatodruggies" or "chase a naked man" or character names that are "iamalock" or "elitepala" or "dillfather" or "cheesesandwich" or "gandálf" or "hateful" or "unnecessary" or "pelledruid" NYAAAARHRG. Time to sort the lineup for tonights Ulduar-25. Tanks and healers as always but lacking DPS. Comfortable problems.

Sartharion with three drakes up

Sweet Jesus, that fight is worse than Mimiron. We tried zerging it a couple weeks back to no avail - Sarth goes invincible when Shadron activates, leaving only 75 seconds to burn him. Even with all DPS doing an average of nearly 7k DPS (using 6 DPS:ers) I think some mechanic stops Sarth from being killed without the drakes going down first.

We came back hoping to do it right - surely we'd have the DPS to burn the drakes in between each phase, and healers + tanks good enough to deal with the adds so we could burn them down during transitions.

HELL NAW. And it's not like we brought the light hitters. The people in the raid group generally perform well on meters during raids, that was not the problem. People dodged flamewaves, the adds got tanked (on the last tries anyway, more on that later) and DPS was decently consistent. Second drake lands. BOOM. We blow up. When the adds were supposed to be tanked by the drake tank they frequently came loose and blew the healers up. When the adds were tanked properly we didn't have the DPS to burn Tenebron before Shadron landed, and we even struggled to do this after having killed Shadron - we had 90 seconds to burn her, and keep control of the adds, and still Tenebron would be up when Vesperon landed, and in that transition, we'd blow up. We ended up biting the bullet and killing him with just one drake up because of people having to leave (mostly me, had been up for quite a while) and repair bills stacking (and I was cloth and got off easy - it's just we'd been having wipenights for a few raids in a row, which takes it's toll even on the wallet of a reasonably rich mage).

All in all it was a great experience, because it tells me that some encounters still almost require a certain composition. We had no rogue to deal with the adds, we had no shaman to provide blood lust, and we weren't stacked for physical or magic damage but instead had a bit of both. Every little thing helps (or in this case, hinders) and correctly stacked we would have had a better shot at doing it. We did have good tankage and good healage. If you read this, well done!

Ding! 20!

Sometime today, my noob dinged 20. He promptly asked for new quest areas since he was tired of the Barrens. Why, oh why, if you are undead, do you go to The Barrens to quest? Guess he is a proper noob after all. If you read this, go to Hillsbrad foothills. You can get far into the 20's fast there and the higher level quests are kinda easy too.

Understanding a boss fight in six easy steps

This is a set of thoughts I've pondered for a while, and I think I need it out of my system. While raidleading, and through some extensive raiding, I've discovered these "phases" in understanding and executing a boss fight. I've tried using them to my advantage.

1. Reading/hearing about it

The very first step is getting a general idea of what is going to happen. Written guides tend to focus a lot on exactly how much damage a certain ability does rather than the execution itself. This is good for finetuning (figuring out the abilities that will be healable through for example), but does not really help someone trying to understand the basic composition. Instead, people hear other people talk about things that happen in the fight and get a (sometimes faulty) idea of what's going on. When I'd read the Yogg-Saron fight quickly (didn't want to spoil it too early on!) I figured there'd be tentacles and an episode of going into the god himself - just like C'thun. When I truly studied it (in preparation of maybe downing Vezax) I quickly realized we'd have no chance on performing the fight without ample preparation and practise. This is a very basic step, you need to know the abilitie's names to be able to distinguish what the hell the raid leader is shouting about to be able to execute the fight. This leads me into the next step.

2. Watching videos of it

By now, you have the very utterly basic grasp of what the boss can do. To realize what you are going to experience however, you need to see it done. This also helps with stuff like situational awareness, graphics/animations for boss abilities and a general feel of timing between events (written guides, again, are very specific - but 15 seconds during Ignis are completely different from 15 seconds during Razorscale). If you can find PoV's from your class it's all the better, but anything works. By now, you're fairly well equipped. Assuming your raidleader (or someone else for that matter) has a brief repetition before the fight, you are ready to go on to step 3.

3. Doing it the first time

Face it, you'll most probably fuck up. You've misunderstood how an ability works, you're too slow, you forget an important mechanic and you most likely have a few others in the raid who are just like you. Or, everything will go fine, you got carried by the raid and whatever pitfalls were there you avoided them through some kind of miracle. However, this only leads to ignorance as you will think you did fine, which you may have done due to luck, and the next time, one of the random abilities may pop more often, and you'll wipe.

4. Doing it the fifth time

This is perhaps my favorite phase of all - the fight still feels new, you still have some ideas about what to do to do better, and you have learning experiences still. You'll also be starting to work out a way to optimize the execution for future smooth kills. My first Hodir tries I had no idea about the fires so I'd run around like an idiot between Starlights and tested the limits of my IA Arcane spec's mobility. Too much running, too little DPS. Then I learned about the Singed debuff, and I figured the toasty fires out, and the other day I hit a 18k DPS peak (overall DPS was still weak but I'll get som epic DPS next time...). Arguably, I'd been stupid before and not read the add's abilities thoroughly enough, but we did down him and I'd probably never noticed unless I'd sat down to study the fight again. Reason I did this? To start raidleading, which brings me onto my next step.

5. Being able to explain it to someone

It is true for all knowledge and understanding: you have truly understood it the moment you can explain it to someone and have that person understand too. This is doubly true for boss fights in WoW, since you actually need to do good and accurate explanations to maximize performance. Once you know everything there is to know about the boss fight (to be able to execute it "good enough", at least) you have reached an understanding. By now you have several high performance kills behind you and you still try to do your best and beat your score on those kills, be you healer, tank or DPS. If you haven't already, you could problably lead a raid that does this boss - you know all the ins and outs and can make judgement calls about who does what. You also have enough awareness and multitasking skill to shout at people, warn about abilities and mechanics.

When I raidlead, I utilize explanations made by raid members as both a kind of checkup, a way to have people other than the raid leader be heard, and to make sure that the people attending get explanations by different people (which guarantees different angles). It's a trick I learned as a squad leader trainee in the military. :)

6. Being able to dick around

This is the final phase in a boss fight's life - when he or she or it turns to the dreaded farm status. You are good enough that you can afford to make mistakes and still make the kill, and you might even try and have a threat race with the tank, doing your best to steal aggro instead of manage it, just to give the tank a challenge. You might blabber on Vent and not do your job and the raid's overall performance won't be affected that much. You might not need to kill offtanked adds cause the tank who's on them is good enough. You can go watch a Youtube video on your other monitor and still keep a decent DPS rotation up. Be mindful though! Once the mistakes I mentioned start to happen, and the interrupting rogue steals aggro and gets twatted, you still need to focus and shape up. All of a sudden it got serious again. If you have gotten to step 6, you should be able to drop down to your step 5 performance and still pull the kill off. This is what separates a good group that's on step 6 from a bad one.

Project Noob - the Shocker!

So, last night I contacted my noob on IRC to see when he'd be able to play next time. I greeted him "hai" and he said almost instantly "Good that you're on! Do you know any good places to farm linen cloth?". A bit stumpted, I said "well, all humanoids drop cloth, and there's not a lot in Tirisfal Glades" and he went "I know they do! I asked if you know any good places!" and I had to reply "well, there's quite a few humanoids in Silverpine once you get to that level range..." and he replied "Yeah I'm having some troubles with the mages there". He was leveling tailoring and enchanting (I'm not sure, but I think he'd read that on Noob says WOW. Either that, or he'd figured it out on his own. Either way, good call!).

Turns out he is level 17 (or was, when I left him last night) and had run out of quests to do on his own. We discussed macromaking and how to handle multiple mobs (with targeting, focus and stuff), and it looks like the little bastard is turning into quite a competent warlock. I knew I should have tricked him into some other class...

We still discussed some nuances of the game but he seemed to have gotten a pretty good grasp of what he can grasp at that level, and I also let him ride my mammoth to some quest mobs and fragged them for him. He was fascinated by the locales and seemed excited about going to Hillsbrad foothills at level 20 - he'd been playing those missions in Warcraft 2 just earlier. I'll try and set up an interview with him - if you have any questions you want me to ask, try and post them in the comments section.

On a unrelated noob post, the mage 4T8 bonus is ridicolously fun. Even two in a row is great, three makes me giddy and at six I had to change my pants.

How to fix mages

Holy shit here's some mage QQ!

Here are my top five concerns about mages, and how to fix them.

1. Mana regeneration. Evocation can sometimes be folded into a pretty little swan that we hang in a string in our window to love (glyhped, in PvP or while solo/leveling). Sometimes, it's a white-hot lamp post shoved up our arses (PvE). Make it Innervate style. I know we shouldn't steal mechanics, but Blizzard are homogenizing the classes so much anyway so it's not gonna matter. Let it be instant and self-cast and have it break on any other cast being made, instead of channeled. And hey, remove the cooldown. Every tick we are casting Evocation instead of Fireball is a DPS loss anyway, so people would keep it to a minimum. They are lowering mana costs across the board and upping mana returns (in the Fire tree) but it does not solve the problem, only alleviate the symptoms ever so slightly. We need a tool to manage our mana, not stuff we pop on every cooldown like, to paraphrase a good friend, a tramp on chips. We especially do not want that only. ONLY. Tool to be able to flunk. Huntards may accidently stay too long in AotV and do shite DPS. Warlocks may lifetap and have it kill them. But they will always get the mana, even at the cost of DPS and/or life. The L2P issue is non-existant. A mage that runs out of mana (and we will) is useless and has fallen into a hole that means begging the druids for innervate, bugging the priests about whateverit'scalled and telling shammies to pop their free mana totem when the shamans themselves are at 95% mana. That, or we wait excrutiating seconds while wanding, at least keeping Scorch and Living bomb up at the target. Even 20 seconds spent in this manner is extremely frustrating even if we completely ignore the fact that we'll drop on the meters. It's simply boring to autoattack. FIX. MAGES'. MANA. TOOLS.

2. Threat managment. Make Mirror Images work like Lolcrawler thought they did. Take them off the global cooldown. Have Invisibility keep ticking no matter what (damage, movement etc.) - the three second fade timer I can live with since it is not our oshit button (MI working as intended should be), but a deliberate and planned complete threat dump. Also, make sure that I can still see stuff and keep the boss targeted, so I can insta-break it in raids with a new cast (just like hunters have been able to since, I dunno, forever?), and so that I can navigate solo/leveling/PvP content while under the effect (just like rogues have been able to do sine, I dunno, forever?). Fire has extra issues due to little threat reduction talents and extreme streakyness. Every instant Pyroblast we cast is going to have been preceded by two Fireball crits in a row for the proc by definition, and it will be cast right at the tail of a third fireball, that quite possibly could crit, and the Pyroblast could also very well crit, for a total of metric fucktonne damage in half a second. This will be further adressed below.

3. RNG dependent DPS. This is especially true with the T8 four-piece set. Rogues get Rupture crits. We get another lottery. I like this, but the T8 bonus needs to be a refresh of the proc, not just a non-consumption. The whole Hot streak mechanic fucks with the Haste = More DPS, Crit = More DPM paradigm because we will want to cast those instant Pyros, consuming a buttload of mana (also, Burnout). Right now haste and crit give about the same DPS value for Fire mages, with haste slightly on top, and you can chose to "spec" for garantueed DPS (haste) or potentially higher, potentially lower DPS (crit), or a balance that fits you. How to fix this? I love proc playstyles, but Hot streaks needs to be a lot more consistent (not necessarily more often, mind you). Change it to three crits, consecutive or non-consecutive. This will slightly alleviate the threat spikes too. This means that a series of crit, non-crit, crit, non-crit, crit, non-crit, crit, non-crit, crit, non-crit would yield one Hot streak instead of zero as today, and a series of crit, crit, crit, crit, crit, non-crit, non-crit, non-crit, non-crit, non-crit would yield one Hot streak instead of two as today. Less RNG, and still rewarding to have a high crit percentage. You'd not get them back to back to the same extent anymore, but up the proc chance on 4T8 and that would be solved, at least a little. Alternatively, one could work in a Maelstrom like mechanic, where it lowers the cast time instead, and have a 20% chance to add one charge per Fire spell hit, and 75% chance to add 1 charge on each crit. It's a lot more predictable and won't make the DPS vary so wildly. I can feel in my spine when I'm getting few procs, and when I glance at the DPS meter, I get that confirmed. I don't want to have to do that. You'd still have the fights with many procs and the fights with few ones, but the span would be smaller.

4. AoE DPS and sustainability. This is a big one, and they're experimenting with allowing multiple LB casts. I love this, but it needs a small tweak - it needs to explode when the mob dies. 12 seconds is far too long for any trash to live, and it would add some fun micro managment to trash pulls - imagine having the sparks that the twin mobs in Auriayas patrol path use popped so that a mage's LB would detonate when it's right next to the recipient, for some extra damage. Fun for the whole raid, since you want to pop it late, but not too late... This would give us a fun extra tool.

Flamestrike needs to be frontloaded enough that it's worth casting on trash, without skipping the DoT entirely, it can be of use when we AoE trash close to bosses due to Ignite. And Jesus, give it a larger reticle. Five yards is pathetic. Keep the cast time, but make it worthwhile - it's a FLAME STRIKE damnit, not "Ow, the ground is hot".

Now, Blizzard on the other hand, should recieve a fade mechanic. Keep the reticle size, but have it stop using mana when you stop casting it, and keep doing nerfed damage for a while. This way you could keep a big one up via channeling, or spam a lot of small ones at a lower mana cost to cover larger areas. The overall DPS should be balanced so that each reticle needs four or five targets for it to be worthwhile to do the "instant" Blizzard (where you'd just start casting it and let the "fade" mechanic do the rest, practically turning it into an ice version of old Flame strike), and two targets for a full channel to pay off, and maybe three or four for a balanced, half one. Needs smart usage, and can yield nice results. Different new tools for different situations, built into the same old spells.

Overall, mana costs need to be reduced, but not too much - remember we fixed Evocation :). Fix the bloat in the Fire tree so that Fire mages can pick up Dragon's breath and Blastwave. Fix the bloat in the Arcane tree and give Arcane a targeted AoE too. I'd like the concept of a magic reducing zone, but DK's have that one covered, and the slowing of attack time is covered by hurricane, and lowering cast times feels a bit unimaginative. A targeted vulnerability-style AoE debuff that applies a DoT to the stuff it hits? This would further the notion of Arcane as the utility tree - stick up... "ARCANE NEEDLE STORM" and then go to town with your normal AoE rotation on weakened mobs. Have Arcane have talents that make it good enough to be their best AoE choice so that each spec actually uses the spells from it's main tree.

I want to AoE, and I want to contribute, but I am very reluctant because what tools I have are very blunt for the job - they cost too much and have a very low risk/reward ratio.

5. Quality of life issues. Amp/Damp magic needs to be castable on a raid in one go. Slow fall needs to be castable on a raid in one go (with same mana cost per target in range - quite possibly make the range akin to Arcane Explosion's but apply Slow fall to all within, and keep the targeted version at the current 30-something yards depending on talents). Improved Scorch needs to be a one point talent that makes your Scorches apply "MAGIC VULNERABILITY", a shared debuff that locks speced into ISB and mages speced into Arcane and Frost can apply and refresh that is -shared- and always at 5%. The 3% extra ego crit that was stuck on there can be smacked onto some other talent to not nerf Fireball crit rates or removed if that's the price to pay for better debuff application. Mages should be allowed to keep mage food during logouts, other classes not. None of this will break the game, but will make us feel more awesome. And that's really what it's all about. Multitarget Slow falls, if ONLY EVER GOOD ON ONE FIGHT (to alleviate fall damage during Malygos vortices), would make me feel so damn cool. A raid leader going "GATHER UP FOR SLOW FALL" would make me all tingly inside, instead of having to waste precious global cooldowns that could have been spent fireballin'. I can probably think up a couple more if I get the chance, but the problem is that we have so many small problems it's turned into a really big one.

My last point is the PvP/PvE discrepancy. We want four viable PvE specs instead of one if I'm being harsh, three if I'm being kind, and two if I'm being reasonable, and four viable PvP specs instead of two. Fixing Fire PvP and Frost PvE requires entire posts though, so I won't cover that here but instead mention it as a quality of life issue. I want to be able to PvP as Fire, and I sure as hell would want to be able to PvE as Frost. FOR FUN. Not because some arbitrary mechanics require me to be pigeonholed. Hell, kill that stupid Frostfire spec anyway, if that's what it takes to fix Fire PvP and Frost PvE. It's not a interesting hybrid elemental build, it's just a Fire mage with more mana and a differently colored ball of hurt. Three PvE specs and three PvP ones is plenty.

In conclusion, I don't really mind that raid leaders don't need to bring more than one mage. I wan't the old DPS vs. Utility classes back. But, if Blizzard is hell bent on keeping hybrids' DPS on par with pures' DPS, then I -do- want utility above and beyond 5% extra spell crit on stuff I Scorch. The choice shouldn't be "Hmm, do I get 3.5k DPS and 5% extra spell crit, or 3.5k DPS and 13% extra spell damage, or do I stack for melee buffs instead" but rather "Hmm, do I take a 3k DPS that brings 13% spell damage and 5% spell crit, or do I bring a 5k DPS". Numbers are made up, and should be read as balanced, assuming 5% crit is worth the same as 13% spell damage etc, but I hope it serves to illustrate my point a bit.

Project Noob - The patching

The poor bastard had to patch for about one and a half hour. His first race choices were blood elf, night elf or forsaken. But, he kinda liked Sylvanas in The Frozen throne, and he seemed to like the DPS/DoT/Debuff approach to the playstyle of a warlock, and said "forsaken warlock perhaps?". I made some jokes about mages and warlocks being sworn enemies and stuff but that I'd told my brother to roll warlock over mage if he wanted a caster because I think the playstyle suits more people and it's a flexible, fairly easy class.

He said "rogue might be fun?" shortly after and I said I liked the playstyle so-so and explained the difference between mana and energy, and combo points/finishers, and compared them to assassins from Diablo 2.

Then he went on to say "what class does Forsaken fit as?" and I explained that their racials had pretty little impact on what class he chose (if you are a troll, by contrast, your racials benefit the classes that benefit from haste or ranged damage) but that they made good casters cause of the male undead offensive casting animation (which I really like).

After some naming (no dashes, no spaces etc) issues he eventually settled on a greek name for his female undead warlock. I met up with him almost as he emerged from the Deathknell crypt (I ran my druid from Crossroads when he started making his character) and we set up some chat for him (a party tab) and made sure he got some basics down - right clicking initiates melee combat which is kinda inefficient if you are a caster, but pressing 2 tosses a shadow bolt that deals a lot more damage. Using WASD for movement lets you access your number buttons a lot easier than using the arrow keys (seems to be a prelevalent noob mistake) and when he was level 2 we managed to get him an imp. I taught him some basics about threat after he heard my quite audible Omen threat warning over Skype, and demonstrated the diffence in damage threat and taunts by use of Growl. He tried making sense of the skill/talent system by referring to Diablo 2 and I think he's got a grasp of how trainers got into the mix. Kinda tricky to explain "specs" with the talent trees not visible but I compared him to a necromancer in Diablo 2 and I think he got it. His mic was also kinda useless so I couldn't hear what he said half the time, but he does own a proper headset so that'll hopefully change.

He got ready for a party, thanked me for the crash course and we agreed on playing sumoar sum other day. A good start, if I may say so myself.

Project Noob - The beginning

Subject aquired - a male somewhere between 20 and 30 who wishes to be anonymous. Subject is an avid gamer of all sorts and well versed in the Warcraft universe (although claims to get the stories from the different games mixed up), but has never played a MMORPG before, due to "Not trusting myself to handle it". After reassuring him that WoW actually is kinda boring and can feel like work after a while, and the lore:y parts that would fascinate him doesn't stretch that far into the game (the TBC and WotLK parts are far in his future, and those are the "loose ends" from WC3 that he'd be interested in looking into), he started downloading the client.

Updates will follow, along with some in-depth looks at his first thoughts.

Blizzard giveth, Blizzard taketh away

The posts about 3.2 have been around for some time now, and being a casual blogger, I never hoped to compete with the likes of WoW.com or MMO Champ for news. Instead, I'll try and offer a few insights and analyses to the mage and shaman changes respectively.

The general changes are pretty interesting - although my kneejerk reaction to Emblems of Conquest dropping in friggin heroics was "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I'VE WORKED HARD AND LONG TO EARN ENOUGH TO SOON BUY MY FIRST TIER 8 PIECE, AND NOW ANY FRESH LEVEL 80 CAN WALTZ INTO THE HEROIC GRIND AND BUY ILVL 232 STUFF A WEEK LATER Q_Q!", I think I can appreciate the slack Blizzard are cutting people who are gearing their third or fourth alt (such as myself, in a distant future - I'll not be fucked over when the next expansion comes, but rather have some 4-5 level 80's to grind to max level for some added fun). At the same time, why T8? Why not bump heroics/Naxx-10 to Walrus and Naxx-10 end bosses/25 normal bosses to Conquest Badgers? It's gonna be slightly longer before we have people in full ilvl 232 gear destroying Ulduar PuG's at least. And yes, I think a time will come when the average gear and fight awareness level allows most of Ulduar to be PuG:ed.

I don't really care though, cause deep inside, I'll know that I earned my badges when it was still hard, and that I am better than everyone else, so I'll be fine, and it'll be an overall gain. Mount changes look good, and again, while giving a free ride to new players, it offers well needed speed boost to levelling alts. The new raid instance seems rather lackluster and is not consistent with old dungeon design, and frankly, I've never been that psyched about "tournament" or "gladiator arena" type of gameplay. While I'm sure Blizzard will stick some nice and interesting mechanics in there, the idea of "let's have them fight wave after wave of adds" is a bit overdone and lazy. Mount Hyjal comes to mind, and I remember how frustrating it was to wipe on the last wave before the boss and have to do them all over again.

As far as mages are concerned, we are still getting shafted. We are decent for damage, it's only we have to work 36%* harder to get the same results that are facerolled by other classes. We only show up high on the meters when RNG permits. We are, for almost all intents and purposes, the only class that ever runs out of our chief resource. We've not seen any significant quality of life changes for a long time, and they look to be sparse in the future.

And as much as I would like to pretend that showing up high on meters is all that matters, this isn't true. We have quality of life issues that makes the game less fun to play, and they aren't being adressed. They are tossing us a small bone - they are making the invisibility fade timer noninterruptible. We still have to wait 3 seconds for the threat to drop, and it's still something we need to put effort into clearing off (when it's used as a threat dump we want to keep DPS:ing as soon as it has had effect, just like Feign Death for hunters - it's useless for solo play anyway cause you can't see any mobs when it's up...) with right clicking or keeping a macro. I cannot begin to explain how miniscule this is, especially compared to how they are, and have been, basically nerfing everything regarding our mana the last couple patches, and are continuing to do so because of replenishment. They've band-aided Evocation from once being a talent to having two minutes cooldown for arcane mages who like to eat through their mana. But it still requires us to do 0 DPS, it has a fairly unforgiving cooldown, we have to stand still, any damage, movement or pushback will severely diminish the gains since a tick is worth 3.5-4k mana, and with some bad luck that you totally can't compensate for, you'll have to move out of a Kel'Thuzad void zone the exact second you start the cast, quite possibly gaining 0 mana and being forced to wand the next two or four minutes. Game design that prevents the player from playing the game (i.e., keeping up some DPS in the case of mages) is inherently bad game design. They are nerfing replenishment and are tacking mana returns onto ignite at the same time they are lowering the mana cost of Arcane blast, but that does not solve the root problem. I even saw convincing maths showing that you need to take these new changes a lot further than Blizzard is doing for it to not be a very obvious nerf. I'm not begging for buffs (well, to our mana managment, I am), but at least do not nerf anything. Replenishment really screws with the games mechanics - Blizz does not want DPS:ers running out of mana, and they want healers to do it. Giving them all the same mana buff is not gonna help achieve that.

The Q&A brought some great questions and actually some good answers too, in the cesspool that is the official forums. The mana gem/health stone shared CD is being removed. The fights where me being able to eat a health stone would have saved the raid from wiping is probably not more than one, but at least the squishiest class around will be able to cut the healers -some- slack by gaining some much needed self-heal capabilities.

The T9 bonuses look weird, and while datamining is unreliable and we are in for some fixes, it shows some very boring thinking from Blizzards side. The two-piece is basically a free armor glyph. That's nice since it frees up a spot for Impr.... argh, no, sorry, I can't bear to type that. Improved Scorch is crap and needs to be fixed and homogenized with Winters chill and Improved Shadow Bolt to be a shared caster debuff. Anyway, it gives more armor to Ice armor, more regen to Mage armor and more Spirit->Crit rating for Molten armor. Pretty boring, to be honest, since Warlocks and Shamans have similar armor-type mechanics. It would be nice if it affected the way we play and help distinguish us as mages. The four-piece is a straight 5% crit bonus. The T8 four-piece, while heavily increasing our dependence on RNG, was fun, flavouristic and very much inline with how we play the game. Getting straight damage upgrades is boring, this is true for any magical weapon in a roleplaying setting, and our tier bonuses are the closest we get to a "magical weapon" as they come in pen and paper roleplaying. Most of them look rather lackluster, and some even make no sense (datamining issues no doubt), so I hope we get to see a lot of changes to these.

My mage is looking less and less appealing, and levelling my alts in those boring areas where I'v already levelled six alts seems like the reasonable thing to do. And I seriously do not belong with the crowd who reroll the Flavor of the Month. Maybe I'm tired of DPS all over. Maybe I want to heal more or tank instead. I dunno, but I intend to find out by getting my alts in shape.

For shaman, especially resto, it looks promising. Numeric buffs across the board - base health %, totem drops, CH jump distance - it's all good. However, what's really nice is what's been done to the way resto heals. Tidal waves no longer brings LHW haste but crit, NS is now up every 2 minutes, Healing Way is a straight HW buff (combined with Tidal waves haste we'll see some more use of HW than "OSHIT" every three minutes), Ancestral healing goes from armor bonus to physical damage decrease (should be straight damage decrease but it feels as if I'm asking for too much here...), homogenization when Cure Poison and Cure Disease gets slapped together and a big ole buff to Water Shield should make any healing shaman happy. Enhancement will benefit indirectly when rogues get axes, but since we still want slow ones and rogues fast ones I doubt it will be that big of a deal. Shamanistic rage gets a nice fix and makes shamans more like arcane mages (more total mana spent, less mana wasted, shorter cool down on active mana regen), and since I don't play elemental I won't delve into that.

I guess that concludes it - some mage QQ, some shaman happiness, and some general stuff. Here's to hoping that 3.2 is a long way into the future still (despite being up on the PTR already) so we can enjoy the current content when it actually is endgame.

* I made these statistics up.

Mimiron down!

"Just" ten man, but we had an entire night dedicated to downing the bastard and last night he bit the dust after something like 12-13 tries or so. My combatlog farked up which was a big disappointment, but now I have Loggerhead installed so hopefully that won't happen again. We had a few tries at General Vezax too, and I think he is within our grasp gear and skill wise if we get another night dedicated to just killing him.

Mimiron was a big pain, but we managed phase 4 a lot better this time. Last time we had a focused effort at downing him, we got to phase 4 two or three times and promptly wiped each time. This time, we got to phase 4 at least five times and actually stayed alive long enough to have him down to "omg we might make it!!1" two or three times. First time we had no ranged and the head was at ... many %, second time we managed to kill the bottom (or was it middle?) and have it respawn. Third time we got all of the pieces down to about 5% but had a lot of people dead so synchronizing the DPS would be hard and I thought we'd wipe for certain due to one part dying and the others not following suit, but pessimism turned to optimism when everything was below 3% and the bottom went down. I remember frantically screaming "MIDDLE! MIDDLE!" on Vent and then came the achievement popup and a big sense of relief.

Killshot!

Argent Dawn, How I Love Thee

I'm not a religious man, but ... Jesus Christ! I got into Silvermoon City with my paladin (on my way to drop of the necklace to Sylvanas, level 18, woo!) and people in trade were talking Swedish. Very bad Swedish on top of that. People had characters named "Pelleboy" and "Blödjägare" ("Bleed hunter") and other -extremely- silly names - no Gymliz or Legololases as far as I could see though...

I'm all for the whole "I don't identify with my character" but the character is not just a faceless tool with which you play a game, the stuff you put in is supposed to be a representation of that character, and not just a random nickname like the ones you throw around in Counterstrike. People with different characters that share a common name but with accents (someone in trade named Hùbert*" said "I'll log on Húbert*, he is a tank" when someone went LFM AN (in Swedish of course)) for ease of recognition within a guild should just get a better guild or go shoot themselves and rid the world of their filth. Anyone with their nickname and the character's class as the character name should be chemically castrated so that they cannot spread their genes further (no, they will not have breeded yet, cause they are going to be about fourteen year old, hideously mutated and possibly inbred too). They should then be repeatedly tortured, preferably by means of the Pear of Anguish.

I know I won't change anything, and I should be accepting their attitudes and playstyle, and that I sound just like any person more than ten years older than me going "when I was young...", but damnit! Some things are holy, and some things should just be that certain way. I blame the internet. The kids today don't remember a time before the internet, and while that is lovely and teh futar and all, I don't think it's all for good. They are still using it as a very blunt instrument, they are supposed to be "the digital generation" but I'd care to wager that my generation is a lot better at computer things than the kids of today, and not just cause we have had more time to practise!

Anyway. The way people act on Argent Dawn is how I expect normal people who play World of Warcraft would act. I'll never roll on a server that hasn't got naming rules again. Ever. Such a small thing really makes a huge difference - you'd think that the 14 year old snotlings would just come up with a random fantasy looking name and still plague our experience, but they don't. They simply cannot be there to the same extent, cause I'd have noticed. I've played more than 90% of my time on RP servers, and I've never quite seen anything like what I saw tonight. I can count the real douchebags (the type that goes "naa, I'd rather solo play" when asked if they want to group for five minutes when you are both killing the same quest mob) and totally clueless noobs on the fingers of one hand.

/rant.

* Fictious name to protect the innocent. The real name was equally silly however.

The current state of Mages

Yesterday, I was supposed to have written this post, but since I had some loose ends on tanking, I went with those instead. With that safely out of the way, I can attack this subject instead.

First off, I'll do a short introduction and then I'll deal with the different specs and some global issues.

I raid in what I consider to be a fairly normal guild. We have a bunch of really good players, but we aren't exactly hardcore. We don't have minimum attendance and we cancel raids every now and then due to bad signups. We don't have enough people to run Heroic Ulduar on a regular basis but hope this will change when summer and exam season is over. Our current progress in 25 man is Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002 Deconstructor and Kologarn, and for ten-man, every boss up until Mimiron who we are currently working on downing. Myself, I go on (and occasionally lead) 1-2 ten-man Ulduars per week and have so since we started going.

If you are Frost, I reckon you are so by old habit and nostalgia. I wish I was more like you, but I've discovered that the playstyles are pretty much all fun to me and as such, I'm not that attached to Frost that I used to be. If you go to raids as Frost, your raid leader is desperate for replenishment and you are the best person to lose DPS from. You keep only one point in Enduring Winter to not lose replenishment ticks and with that, Water elemental uptime which means even lower personal DPS. The spec only comes in handy in one fight, and that's General Vezax, and then, most likely only ever in hard mode. I'm sorry, but frost does not currently hold any valid ground in PvE content beyond Naxx-10. Frost will most likely not get any PvE love for a long time, if ever. There's very little AoE where Frost could of have shined with ultraboosted Blizzards. Blizzard seems content with having three viable raid specs for mages, and I guess the rest of the specs are in fairly good shape.

For arcane, there's some better news and some worse news however. The good news is that there are several fights with burn phases where arcane really can shine. There's also some high mobility fights and/or fights with lots of target switching. I'll get back to target switching and mobility in a minute though. You will most likely go for a Incanters Absorbtion spec, you lose very little and you have great potential gains in the fights with fire and frost damage. You won't win the meters on any fights, but you can easily fullfil special fight requirements (nuking Razorscale, popping brittle golems and keeping Singed up on Hodir) with a lot less overall raid DPS loss than other classes. For the target switching, you are dependent on TTW for max damage, something that is not likely to be up at all times in add-heavy environments. For off-tanked adds, you might start doing damage for 2-3 casts before the debuff comes up due to various reasons. Your AoE damage is going to be fairly weak, but your Blizzards hit for at least some more than Fires'. All in all, arcane is decent, almost good, but will keep on falling behind due to scaling issues. The real problem is the paradox: IA-Arcane will shine in high mobility/high damage environments, but Arcane overall is dependent on moments to breathe and popping Evocation. I lost so many evos last night I don't even want to count cause I'd probably break out in tears. The fights where Arcane has a good chance to shine is Flame Leviathan (bursting down the turrets), Razorscale (on-demand burst when she is grounded + IA/Flame warding bonuses), Ignis (popping golems, standing in the fire), Deconstructor (nuking the heart) and Hodir (insane haste bonuses + high mobility + IA/Frost warding bonuses). You'll do good on Kologarn (no Scorch for the constant switching, so someone else better bring the 5% crit, hai 2 u warlocks) and Council (some limited absorbtion, fair amount of "stand and nuke" and uninterrupted evos). Thorim is nice for arcane when going in the gauntlet, it usually uses up all my mana and I can evocate while Thorim has his speech, to start the DPS race at full mana again. Freya has a lot of different mechanics but nothing particularly helps arcane, DPS needs to be consistent during all of the phases, but the burstyness is nice when picking off lashers. Start with 0-stack AB on a low-health mob, retarget one with more health for the 1-stack, retarget yet again for the 2-stack and so on, clear the stack with Abarr when you need to run or use it at a tree. Very efficient mana usage and fun to maximise. For Mimiron, the phase shifts and need for burst are good for Arcane, and there's some use to get from IA, but you won't do overall better or worse than any other mage spec bar Frost really.

Another build that might need to use Evocation is Fire, a very mana-hungry spec. I still rarely have issues with mana even in replenishment-less environments, and even when I do go hard oom with small opportunities at regen, it's fun because it was becuase of lots of Hot streak procs, and tossing instant Pyroblasts just makes me giddy. If I could always cast instant Pyros and be forced to wand 50% of all fights, it'd be totally worth it. Fire is definately one of the specs to choose for your Ulduar dual specs. It's top DPS and will continue to be due to scaling, and the (a bit sad) fact that Ulduar loot is basically tailormade for Fire mages. The T8 bonuses, while RNG dependent(as if Fire needed more of that), benefit Fire the most by far whilst Arcane wants to hold on to 2T7 for the mini-trinket since they pop it every cooldown. The gear is littered with hit which is good news for Fire, which needs a whopping 446 to be capped. Luckily, there's 195 hit just on the T8.25 pieces (although the offpiece to throw out - gloves - has a hefty 60 +hit to make up for elsewhere). There's a healthy amount of spirit around, which means you can pick up spirit + SP + haste items and still not ruin your overall stat balance due to lack of crit on that particular piece. Fire will do good in any fight. If you are one-specced, go with Fire, it's the obvious choice. You'll have a trickier time maximising performance on certain fights compared to other specs, but you'll win out in the long run.

Talking about crit leads me on to the last mage raid spec, Frostfire. They thrive on big crits and is the only mage spec that cleary prioritizes crit rating over haste. The playstyle is exactly the same as Fire, only lacking Torment of the Weak and not providing Focus Magic to the raid, plus slightly worse scaling and slightly better AoE. You'll need less hit which means less hit pieces which means more SP/crit/haste. This is also why I've seen better FFB results in my FFB gear than FB results in my FB gear so far - my FB gear can only be hit capped by gimping other stats, whilst I can remain at 368 hit with FFB gear and hit 40+% main nuke crit fairly easy. My arcane spec only picks up 3% hit from talents so the transition from Arcane gearset to FFB gearset was mainly switching haste for crit, and was done as a step towards fully gearing for FB. Time and gear will close the gap. There's not much to be said about FFB that hasn't already been said about fire, however, there are some places where you will have a slightly easier time than Fire. Your AoE DPS will do some good on Razorscale and Freya, your huge crits will be of great help with breaking out people from Hodir's Flash Freezes and on mobility fights you'll have good use of your fairly high damage per casting time. The fight where you will truly shine is Deconstructor. You'll have no mana problems going all out on the heart and still AoE:ing those last adds coming through because the hunter or warlock slacked on their AoE. You hear that, hunters and warlocks? You should DPS the adds, not me! I haven't been the AoE king for like, forever, and I lose a lot of single-target DPS by switching to adds. Don't tell me I'm slacking - it's your job killing them, not mine. Call me when you need a Frost nova.

In conclusion, gear for Fire and keep that as your primary spec. Keep FFB or IA-Arcane as your second one depending on gear, taste and current demands. I'm going with Arcane even though I think FFB would be better ("= higher DPS"), simply because I want my two specs to feel different. Also, Fire and Arcane share the same basic gearing priorities which means I only have to juggle hit - not hit and crit/haste.

Some loose ends on tanking

So, downstairs I discussed why I'll probably always be a DPS player at heart. This is slightly interesting cause I'm considering levelling a tanking class, and I'll probably go for the only true hybrid class (the druid) or the close second (the paladin). Melee DPS can be done on Togtok, and as such, I'd have the core functions (healer, ranged DPS, melee DPS, tank) of the game covered.

I'll be leaving the Death knight out of this equation for now. I considered rolling one before Wrath hit to have a tanking class, but I'm not very interested in the lore and I find the class as such ... an abomination to the game. There, I said it. I think it's the stupidest thing Blizzard has implemented in a long while. I reckon it's a damn fun class to play, and I might have a look at one, but I'd sooner try a warlock or warrior since they are the classes I haven't rolled before (no, the level 8 warrior on Moonglade I made to chat with some friends does not count). Even though I'd hate doing the 1-55 grind again, not to speak of the 70-80 grind. However, I'm an officer of a guild. I'm gearing a second level 80 character up for raiding. I'm pretty deep in this shit already, might as well try and have something to do to keep me from getting the raid boredom and resulting burnout. I will have a lot of time on my hands, and with the right snacks and some kickass music, I think I can put in a serious effort towards it. The dilemma here is that I'd rather have several tanking classes and several healing classes than several different DPS classes - at best, I'd have to level 1 paladin, 1 warrior, 1 druid and 1 priest to have them all covered, and since pallyhealing does not appeal to me, I'd go with the priest, leaving my main project at two characters.

The remaining tanking classes all have some disadvantages that makes me not want to roll them, and some advantages speaking for them.

I'll begin with the warrior. The original tank, a versatile tank with lots of tools of the trade. I'd probably go orc, cause grunts are cool and look sturdy enough, plus, my druid's obviously tauren. I've heard they are a bitch to level though, and as "basic" they feel a little boring. I'm not sure I like the playstyle and I'm not sure I like the baggage that comes with the class. Somehow, warriors are expected to tank, and since I'd roll one to do just that, it shouldn't be a problem, but it still feels a bit like being locked in. Having a class not based on mana would be nice for a change though...

As for druids, they seem like the perfect one-target tank. That'd mean I'd probably spend a lot of time hitting the same mob, racking up threat so the DPS can go wild. I speak raid setting now, which is far in the future, of course. Being the real true hybrid (able to fill all four functions in a raiding environment) finding a group while levelling shouldn't be hard, and they seem easy enough to level with fairly little downtime. Gemming and enchanting two (or four) gearsets is gonna be a pain, but Togtok's self sufficient and he keeps 2.5 sets. Also, I have a level 14 one already, and on my main server. The downside? I don't particularly dig the shapeshifting that much. Constantly raiding as a non-cow (I'd probably go feral/resto) might get on my nerves. As they are the superhybrid, the talent trees don't leave nearly as much freedom of spec as the mage's three do and being locked into cookie cutters is boring.

Moving on to the paladin, my prime suspect here for one main reason: I have one at level 15, and I'm loving the playstyle so far. Downside? It's a mana based class, and I'm tired of those. Silencing mechanics lock you out of a lot of your abilities, luckily, such abilities are rare. The raid situation would most probably suit me, paladins are the embodiment of an offtank, good aoe abilities and a holy frisbee (I just love saying that). I think I'd be tasked with fun tanking missions simply by being a paladin - they always seem to get the offtank tasks such as picking up mobs or guarding special entrances. Another downside is that I'd have to play a belf for it, another race I'm not entirely friends with (look who's talking, I have three belf alts and if they'd been around back then, I'd probably rolled a belf mage instead of the troll one. Sorry, Vorla...) and for Pete's sake! THEY ARE LOLADINS. FOREVER AND EVER. I like saying "Hey, I changed my mind" or "I was wrong all along" a lot more than "Ha! Told you so!", even though it stings, so this will probably be my choice. Also, a belf paladin named "Audacity" is just too frickin' cool for lots of reasons, especially since I'd be levelling her along with my undead priestess "Prudense" (the good spelling was taken). I'm just a sucker for toons named after concepts rather than a random fantasy name. In the end, Auda is on a PvP server and I think I'm gonna give that a shot before transferring, I might like it. I'll probably count ten gankings and then give up, though...

Why Erc is wrong

Some kinda druid guy from my guild who thinks he's all big shot made some blogpost where he was cramping my style. I can't let shit like that fly, can I? With tounge planted firmly in cheek, here's my take on the subject.

First off, I need to do a short presentation of my preconceptions when starting my first character in WoW. I had basically no idea of the game, and almost went with warrior as my first class, since I felt that was "basic". The barbarian, the fighter, those classes from role-playing games were always just "Walk up to enemy. Apply trauma to face. Repeat." whilst the squishier caster classes were a bit more fiddly to learn to play. Cause they're squishy and all. Still, I went with shaman, since I didn't know if I wanted to heal, do DPS or tank. Yeah, they were actually considered offtanks back in the day - the enhancement tree had a shield specialization talent. I actually maintanked some instances in TBC and vanilla.

Anyway. I went with mage as my second alt since I wanted to try a fiddlier class, that needed more "skill". Frost spec meant I never let mobs touch me if I didn't want them to. Which I didn't. Frost requires insane micro in PvP, so I was sorta right about the fiddly part. Raiding and instances? Mash 3 until fingers bled. Not so fun. Then came Icelance, and some other stuff. The mage class got some attention. We did top DPS for a while. We scaled for shit in TBC, but hey, we only ever saw the inside of Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine cavern like, three times. I kept up with people even though I was "lol frost go pvp".

Then came Wrath, and boy, did I read up. "Reading up" even had a name - theorycraft - that made it sound important. And so I theorized. And I crafted. And I learned all the talents and how they interacted. I was gonna top the fucking meters. And why? I don't really need e-peen. I can dig attention, but when I've done something, I don't really like that attention, that awe, that some people give you. When someone whispers me "Nice gear!" in Dalaran, I feel a little bad. The answer lies with my inner gamer. When I buy a new game, it's because I want to be challenged. Wrath raiding content is challenging: we have yet to down Mimiron in ten man, although we are pretty damn close. I wanted to make sure I was on the guild team that got the guild firsts. I wanted to be the obvious choice to bring to a raid. I'm after the same single player experience I get from playing Halo or whatever.

I haven't really tried tanking to any large extent, but I have gotten a good enough taste of healing on a shaman and on a priest to say, that I am truly a DPS player at heart. The actual buttonpresses might be a rotation and not a list of priorities with mages although the Fire playstyle is close. That's not the point. Healing on a shammy is three buttons. DPS:ing on my mage is usually four. When a healer doesn't land that heal and the tank goes down, it's not much to do - you were probably spam healing and the only thing that'd saved the tank was if you'd have more haste. A tank let's a mob slip and it goes haywire in the raid, killing half the DPS team? QQ more, should have watched your threat. Maybe the tank had more important things to think about than to build threat on the mob you just decided to unleash your full arsenal on. Neglective tankers and healers don't really come into play here, cause I'm sort of basing this on people actually trying. There's not much analyzis to do for a tank or a healer when things go wrong. There are genuine mistakes, such as using a global cooldown to top off a DPS when no damage is expected in the near future, and in doing so, missing the window to heal the tank. To avoid the situation, you would have had to been psychic, or let that poor DPS think "isn't I'm not gonna get a heal soon? I might be dying to the next meteor!". I'm not trying to downplay the extremely critical effect a tank or healer mistake can have in causing a raid to wipe. I'm trying to open your eyes to the other perspective.

See, tank and healer performance is always binary. Either you built enough threat, or you didn't. Either the mob resisted your taunt, or it didn't. As a DPS, your performance is always fluctuating. More is always better, up until 129% of tank threat, assuming you are not in melee range. Wiped on that boss, and the boss had 60k health left? My fireballs hit for about 5k on average, that's 12 fireballs. They take about 2.5 seconds to cast, which means, that if I'd been able to squeeze out 30s of more DPS time, the boss had been down. Did I reapply Scorch when I really didn't need to? Did I let the Scorch stack fall off because I was reckless and didn't reapply it before Auriaya feared us? Could I have watched the Screech timer a bit more closely and dared stand still for a few more seconds each minute? Could I have stacked my cooldowns more efficiently? That's the kind of questions you face as a DPS. Those "60k wipe" moments are fairly rare though. That just means you did your job the other fights.

Cause, really, what is our job? Not topping the meters, even though it's fun - it's making sure the boss goes down fast enough, and to not stand in the fire too much, so that the healers and tanks have an easier job. I want to be on top of the meters. But there's always one person that I want to beat, and that is myself. You can see me as a perfectionist, but when I slack on the DPS on Naxxnight, I feel a little bad about it. I still perform decently, and we get the job done, maybe I'm 8th on meters instead of 4th. That doesn't irk me nearly as much as getting 2.6k DPS one night when I had 3.1k the other.

DPS, your job is not to have a e-peen measuring contest each fight. That's not why we are here. It's to make the healers and the tanks go "lol thx 4 throwin' firaballs n all but srsly, we r most imrpotant". I think we can afford to let them have that smug feeling of being the key part to raid success. While healing and tanking may be arts, DPS is science.


And science saves lives.