Northrend Lights

So……
I’ve been raid healing on Saxi lately.
The horde guild we are in needed a healer and after talking it over with shmoo, it was decided I could raid again without impacting the quality of our lives too much. So, I apped to my own guild (fair is fair after all, and we never apped just to hang out) and and now I am healing.

And I’m enjoying it. I am, by far, not the best healer we have. Not even the best druid healer. But I am learning. I have changed my spec, re-glyphed twice, and changed numerous key bindings and spell rotations.

My gear has vastly improved (I was totally carried that first night. Seriously.) and I am reading raid logs again and seeing what the better healing druids are doing and what I can do to catch up/exceed.

And I am enjoying it. Our raid leader is always so calm. Even when unhappy with one of us. Even when we are stupid. Even when he is cussing…. he never yells. And if he does yell, he’s not doing it on vent where we can hear it. And the worst thing you can hear from him is “What are you DOING?” or “Why did you do that?”

Everyone that we raid with knows their shit. They know their role (and often the role of others), and are prepared for the fights. Videos have been watched, and strats have been read. It is a pleasure to raid with these people, and I am enjoying myself immensely. And when it’s my turn to sit out, I am fine with that too. Because I am seeing content I was missing, and having a great time while I do it.

First, not dead, just busy in game and RL. And I’ve had nothing constructive to say.
However, I saw this on Of Claws and Paws, and he got it from whatisboom? and I figured.. why not?

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Saxifrage, Druid, 0/54/17

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
lot of 25 Naxx, 5 mans, 10 man Ulds

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
Challenging Roar/Swipe. With the current lack of crowd control and gung-ho dps, I need every AoE advantage I can get to hang on to all the mobs.

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Frenzied Regen. It’s macrod in to an Oh Shit! button, so I don’t use it unless I am pretty sure I am going to die or unless we are wiping to give everyone else a better chance to invis or whatever.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
The massive health and armor. While not the great lead that it used to be, it’s still one of the bear advantages.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
AoE threat. Even with swipe, and speccing, and blah blah blah, it’s just total shit.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
OT. Mostly because I enjoy it. I find it more of a challenge to watch my threat and keep it under the MT, but at the same time, keep it up enough to take over should the MT die. That and on a lot of fights, you are rotating out tanks anyway due to debuffs, and I like the interchange, but I don’t NEED to be the MMFIC.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
With as in playing or with as in the other tank in the group with you?
For the first, Druid. I never managed to get my warrior past 43, and I just am not feeling it.
For the latter, Pallies. Perhaps because they’ve been my tanking partners more often, or perhaps because I am prejudiced due to some of the warriors I have run across in the past.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Warrior, because it’s not bear.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
I sometimes still aggro radius pull, and that’s a big no no and I know it.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
The jackass dps who keeps running ahead of the tank and not standing back and waiting for the pull. Often when I pull I am also taking care of positioning too, and twitchy dps often jump in and screw with it, making it harder to turn the boss or whatever. I like to turn everything I tank as a general rule.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
No. Pallies and DK seem to be doing the best right now. And that’s ok. Every tank has their season. I’d just like some more bear glory. Or I’d like to be capable of some comparable dps to the other tanks. When specced and gemmed specifically for tanking, you just don’t do the same dps the other tanks do, not even close, or, *I* don’t, and that makes me sad.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
The smoothness of a run, as far as pacing and pulls. Whether or not the healer is going OOM all the time, just healing me. As most tanks by now, I often play other roles on other toons, and have a good idea about what’s going wrong if it’s me. And sometimes, it is.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
That we are just healers. Or that someone specced feral can automatically just switch to cat and pump out the damage, because you can’t really anymore since the tree was split.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
How to gear effectively. It’s more straightforward than it used to be, and there are more options now, but it’s still a little different. Learning to account for the changes your form apply to the gear seem to cause people problems. A good rotation can also be a challenge to learn.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
EH. Bears have been EH forever now, and still are.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
DKs. It’s another class I just don’t enjoy playing so I haven’t taken the time to learn how they tank.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
For tanking I use Perfect Raid as my raid frame, and then I used to use Optitank but it seems to not work correctly anymore, so I’ve just switched to TankTotals, and the jury is still out on it.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I always generally focus on agi and stam since parry and shield block don’t mean jack to me, and SotF takes care of my defense stat basics.
Agi just brings more to the party. It’s dodge, crit, AP, and armor. So Agi, Stam, and then a bit of expertise or hit. I try not to let anything get too low, but as long as it’s not, agi and stam are my choices.

One week after Blizzcon and I am tired of Cataclysm already.

It’s probably a side-effect of using WoW Insider as my primary WoW news source, I get so tired of all their reposts of the same shit with different wording over and over. I know there’s something new coming, I read all the stuff they posted from Blizzcon, and really it’s exciting stuff…. blah blah blah.

But can’t we stop rehashing it to death already?

Sass pointed me to an interesting post over at the ofclawsandpaws Blog. I don’t usually read dr00d blogs, but after taking a gander it seems to be quite well done and Al seems to have a handle on the class. Far more than I would anyway.

However, there has been a recent post on the blog entitled Expansion 4.0 where the Al takes issue with several “features” of the latest expansion and rails against the direction WoW is taking. Al makes four points (well 3 really) about aspects of the latest announced expansion, Cataclysm, and the general state of the game. As I read it I found I objected to nearly every point being made, for various reason. Below you will find my attempt to articulate my differences of opinion;

1. Lore is being rewritten/added to so that it fits WoW.

So again Blizzard is adding onto the lore of Warcraft even though the actual lore writers haven’t even written as much. Night Elf mages, Tauren paladins, and Troll druids are just three of the new class/race combinations, but they each have their own problems. Night Elves abhor and in Warcraft 3 killed anyone who practiced Arcane magic. So for this race to allow fellow Night Elves to become mages there will have to be a greater change than just the return of Deathwing. A reminder: These Night Elves saw Highborne using Arcane magic to bring forth Sargeras and the Burning Legion. Tauren paladins on the outside looks like a logical race/class combination, but where do we find Taurens following the Light outside of those in the Argent Crusade? Then there are Troll druids which I see as never being able to happen. Trolls have a history of sacrificing their own gods for their own use (visit Zul’Drak). Also Zul’aman is not a good example to bring up. In Zul’aman the troll priests just used the gods to take on their forms. This is not shapeshifting or any type of druidism.

Counterpoint 1. Lore – Lore is being rewritten:

Yup, sure is. It’s being re-written by the CANONICAL SOURCE FOR THE LORE. This is akin to all the bitchers and whiners who feel stomped on when George Lucas wrote the prequels. Guess what. It’s his fucking universe. He invented it. You only get to play in it because HE MADE THE SHIT UP. STFU and write your own epic fucking universe that enthralls millions of people and then see if one minor change doesn’t fucking piss of some absurd % of them.

2. The complexity of the game is slowly being removed.

We want to remove all unnecessary stats, make all existing stats understandable, and make all “core” stats more appealing.

This statement says enough for me. Basically people don’t want to have to think much any more. Lets take a look at one statistic they plan on removing:

Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and “mathy”.

Too mathy? Really? It’s hard to take a couple minutes to use RAWR or another similar program to see what gear might be better for you? Hell we have Elitist Jerks and countless other sites that do the math for us! This is just another example of how sadly dumb a large amount of the WoW population has become. It’s the emergence of the “Microwave Generation” in WoW.

Counterpoint 2. Complexity – It’s getting “simpler”:
This is SOP for commercial MMO’s. They get simpler as the userbase expands. It happened with UO, EQ and numerous others. Complexity was gathered from expansions which allowed for more options and choices, but the underlying system and mechanics were simplified to maintain a “streamlined” progression for new players drawn to the game.

3. ”The Horde finally conquered Southshore.”

That statement more or less made me laugh a lot. If you look at the upcoming storyline it’s more like Deathwing covered it in water so the Horde declares victory. Not really a problem, but moving right along.

Counterpoint 3 – Southshore, horde, something:
I agree with Al here. No real impact. Purely informational. moving on…

4. Blizzard will do whatever it can for money.

Yes, Blizzard is a business and the majority of the goal of a business is to make money to continue growing. But a business is also supposed to produce a well-done product. So far it’s looking like Cataclysm may end up as a half hearted project just to make more money. I am hoping that this project is more likely to be released in 2-3 years not 1-2 years. Blizzard needs to finish out Wrath and work all the bugs out. TBC and Vanilla content still have unfixed bugs!

Counterpoint 4. – Blizzard loves money:
You had better hope they love money. It’s the only bargaining chip you have. It’s also the reason the game is going in the direction it is. It’ll continue to pump out expansions with expanded content. It’ll continue to streamline. It’ll continue to alienate sections of it’s player base which no longer represent the majority and are deemed too costly to satisfy. It’ll eventually jump the shark and Blizzard will likely either replace it with an MMO based off another of it’s massively popular properties or Activision will kill it dead.

Thanks for listening to me rant and rave.

love,

shmoo

If you have been under a rock today.. Felicia Day and her fellow “The Guild” cast released a cute MMO vid.

Larissa at Pink Pigtail Inn did a post on the lack of RL female tanks. As one, it certainly caught my eye, and I even commented. Twice!

But I am posting my second comment here as I feel it address an entire other issue about tanking that has nothing to do with gender.

Larissa posted in response to another comment:

“Why can’t the tank obey to the marking done by a healer, just like the dps will follow the signs that a tank puts up?
I can’t see the logic in it.”

To which I responded:

As a tank, I can. Even if you are the same class as someone else who tanks, you don’t necessarily tank the same. And then when you consider there are 4 classes that can tank now, it’s a big assumption to think you can understand how not just that class best tanks, but know the mind of the person tanking. That’s why a raid doesn’t go as smoothly with tanks who haven’t worked together before and don’t have a feel for how the other works. When you have two tanks who have worked together and know how the other is going to react, it’s a huge difference.

I personally hate marking. It’s slow and I always miss with my mouse once or twice from trying to do it too quickly. But I am rigid enough in my thought process I want certain mobs marked a certain way if I am the one tanking. Though I am flexible enough to just go with the flow if I don’t get lead, I most likely won’t tank for the person leading that group again.

And I have further things to say about this still.

I do not regret leaving Eleventh Hour. Things were starting to be drama-oriented fast, and I just don’t deal well with that shit anymore. But I’ll tell you this. I really fucking miss tanking 25 Naxx with Errorcode.

I love being OT. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I get to tank and do my thing, and when the MT dies, if I am doing my job right, I swoop in and save the raid, and we don’t wipe. Being OT means you have to think about things more than just MTing. Patchwerk is a great example of this. As OT, your threat needs to be up there. You should be the next highest in threat under the MT in the melee group. If you aren’t. Melee takes the hatefuls, and your raid dps goes down and you may not kill Patch. If you get too high, then suddenly you are tanking and the MT is taking the hatefuls, and your healers are suddenly fucked because it’s not what is supposed to be happening, and you or the MT, and most likely both, die, and the entire raid will shortly follow.

And Errorcode and I, we did Patch right, as well as the rest of Naxx. And we had a good rhythm and flow to things. He knew what I was capable of and how I would react, just like I knew what he was going to do. It felt like dancing really complicated footwork with a really great partner who was graceful and light and knew how to keep up.

But it’s not like it was instant, or even overnight. It took us about 2 weeks after I started tanking full-time to feel like this. And I had the advantage of raiding as a dps with him before I started tanking with him, so I already had a feel for his style, and knew it would work well with mine.

Now, I am back to tanking off and on when The Reborn needs me to, but most of the time I play Sass, and every now and then I am healing on Sax to learn that side of things. But when I do tank, I miss dancing well. I hope that with time, I’ll feel like my new dance partners are at least doing the same steps I am, and that I stop resenting the one guy who seems to have no rhythm, and I’ll learn to respond better to the one who always seems just a half step off from me.

Maybe it’s me who is off. Perhaps I am still dancing to a tune that no longer plays. But as I try to find my way with someone(s) new, I gotta tell you, I really miss my old dance partner.

Back when WotLK first came out and everyone and their uncle were rolling DKs… shmoo and I both rolled DKs too. On opposite factions.
And then we took screenshots in silly locations and I made this silly webpage to go with those screenshots.

You can find it here.

I often log in early in the morning before work to do fishing and cooking dailies.
Jewel of the Sewers was the fishing daily on Monday, and so I trundled down to the dock and threw in my land.

Bam! First cast! It’s a Rat!!! Hot damn!

It's a rat!

And then I go to turn in, and get Exalted with Kirin Tor.

I can think of worse ways to start my week.

——-
On a side note, how are all you people getting such great screenshots of your achievements right when they happen? Because I am never quick enough or expecting it so I always miss them.

We’ve been leveling hordies, and it’s been fun. But it leaves little to talk about for blog fodder. It is nice to take time out and play together again though, and we are enjoying it quite a bit.