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Yagathai

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How much do we rely on our interfaces these days?

I'm pretty sure it's way too much.

Well we need someway to play the game. It would get a bit boring to just stare at your toon standing around in the Den of Trials. :P

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if I'm not enjoying the spec, there's no reason for me to play it.

This so hard. Lots of people don't seem to get this. At the end of the day, even for the top guilds in the world (except possibly a few corner cases that might have some stupid sponsorship deal or something), WoW is a game and is about fun, not about maximizing performance.

Granted, the game for many people - myself included - is in large part about maximizing performance, but there's a huge spectrum of players with different preferences for how much this is the case. And what people don't seem to get so often is that when a player has a different preference, it's not because they're a mouth-breather or an elitist douchebag (though those might also be true). Every spot on the scale is perfectly valid for a player. The flip-side of this, however, is that if you're on a vastly different part of the scale than the others in your group/raid/guild, it's entirely possible that you should not be in that group/raid/guild. There are others out there. And if you see another person 'doing it wrong,' and they're not part of your group/raid/guild, you don't really have a reason to expect them to adhere to your own preferences. I just read a long argument where a guy made the (incredibly douchey sounding) statement that he would not allow a DK to DPS in his raid if said DK had herbalism rather than a 'good' profession. And sure, that's valid for his raid, good on him. But he's still a douchebag because of the context he placed it in - trying to make it sound like another player who had mentioned he had herbalism on his DK was somehow a failure.

I think the enjoyment thing is crucial to why there has always been higher burnout for healers. The 'fun factor' of a class or role (one is as important as the other in this case) is entirely separate from the 'stress level' I discussed earlier.

Stress is another one of those spectrums that has sweet spots for different players. I like to live on the low end of the scale and play the game with the mentality of competing against myself for maximal performance. Stress makes my hands shake more and increases the difficulty I have playing which causes more stress in a kind of horrible feedback loop. I also have a tendency toward being way overcautious, which, since I know about it, leads to frequent overcompensation and as such anything I lead tends to have really stuttery pacing. But most important is that my entire philosophy about the game - maximizing myself and mentally punishing myself for almost any failure - exacerbates high stress situations greatly, because if I'm the leader I'm responsible for everyone else's failure too.

But most of the people I see gravitating to MT roles - Stego and Kal are good examples, particularly Stego - seem to thrive on the pressure and responsibility, and enjoy or at least tolerate the cat-herding that's involved , as well as the problem-solving and tactics portion (which I also enjoy). So a higher or lower 'stress' role is a neutral thing, a preference. It's just that forcing someone into one slot when he isn't suited for that slot is asking for trouble.

Fun factor or enjoyment or whatever is entirely different. Being in your own personal sweet spot for stress is part of it, but there's a lot more involved. Some of it is as trivial as things like "Can I move around/jump while performing my role if I want? Is it not an issue? Is it possible but not correct? Or is it entirely impossible?" (I swear this is the main reason I have never played a DPS caster for long.) Most of it is in the playstyle - what buttons you push when, and what things you have to pay attention to to do your job. Some of it is in the little feelings of accomplishment - big numbers on the screen or particularly cool looking gear or animations.

I could do another detailed analysis but it's really not necessary. The short version is that Blizzard has been very successful in making a huge variety of interesting and fun melee DPS and tanking playstyles. And while I don't know ranged DPS that well, I get the impression that it's not that far behind (but probably behind). But they have continually struggled with various attempts to make healing interesting, and as I understand it, it keeps eventually boiling down to something only slightly more complex than whack-a-mole once everything is fully theorycrafted and optimized.

An interesting idea that comes to mind, though one that's pretty impossible to add to WoW unless it's given to a new class entirely, is to return to hybridization somewhat. With TBC and deeper talent trees, we really lost the entire hybrid playstyle and now you're just a healer, or just a DPS, and any other contributions are pretty trivial. But it occurs to me that the problems healing has being 'interesting' are probably pretty inherent in the fact that it's ally-focused rather than enemy-focused. Enemies are dynamic and change drastically per encounter, but allies are always the same. There's only so much you can do with varying spike/AoE/constant damage or what have you. Also, it's reactive rather than proactive for the most part, which makes it much harder to design a mechanic that rewards smart play and using multiple skills (combo points, as an example).

The simplest example that comes to mind is the one thing I didn't hate about Warhammer Online: the warrior priest class mechanic. You basically had two types of 'mana.' One worked like energy, a constant rate of fast regeneration, but it was only used on abilities that primarily caused damage. The other was much like rage or runic power - it was increased naturally whenever you used one of these damage abilities. That's the one you used for healing. So in order to heal, you had to also DPS. Pretty cool.

The problem is, it sounds cool (and it is) but it doesn't fix the original problem. You end up doing some damage but for balance reasons it's obviously not a whole lot of it, and your actual heals are the same old boring crap so you're still fixing your attention on health bars and playing whack-a-mole only you have to pay attention to this extra thing on top of it and it just makes it more complicated, not better.

What I think would work better is to, rather than just adding enemy focused abilities to the current ally focused ones, change the entire paradigm so that somehow healing is primarily enemy-focused. We have the tools already in a couple places, they're just tuned in a way that makes them minor perks of a DPS role rather than major tools of a healing role. Divine Storm, Vampiric Embrace, Mark of Blood, that kind of thing. Decrease the damage, increase the healing, then toss in some tools that reward paying attention to the actual game rather than the health bars (the spells currently known as Hands are sort of this).

Couldn't happen in WoW because it would only be possible to balance if all healers were done this way and the outcry would be epic if something that fundamental changed for an existing class. But I can dream. And it can happen incrementally to an extent.

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Downed Hodir finally on Saturday night, after much guild drama since the middle of the summer has gimped our raid performance something chronic. Which achievement was then balanced out by a pointless guild officer meeting on Sunday night where longstanding officers spent the entire discussion debating/arguing about what the problems in the guild are caused by. it's probably time for me to move on and look for a new guild, methinks.

Our raid sign-ups have been noticeably lower in the last month or so, presumably folk don't see the point of running content that they know will yield Triumphs emblems in a couple of weeks. Plus folks are generally more caught up with RL/family stuff from Thanksgiving onwards.

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Could I ask, how many healers and dps are people using on Anub 10H? At the moment we are using two tanks, two healers, five dps and one offspec shadow-priest who sort of off-heals in phase 3. I really think we need to get by with two healers in phase 3 and have six dedicated dps, but I'm not sure we can get to him without three healers.
We started doing it with three healers, but have gone to two healers. Two healers feels more repeatable; with 3 healers we found we were barely getting through with only one burrow phase. It really depends on your healers; if you have a paladin you're set. If you have a shaman it's dicey. If you have two druids you might be fucked.

Though we really found that doing things other than comp was the key. Having NR gear on the tank, having frost pots available, making sure to kite the adds away and not worry about them - those things all mattered more than who we brought.

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OK, I already have my own opinions on this but I figured I'd ask you guys too since a majority of you are raiders and understand min/maxing and item worth.

Ony items: are any of you finding them worth it? My general opinion is no because studies have shown them to be a tier behind of everything similar in ilevel. However there is a member of my guild who seems to believe solely in the ilevel of gear. So when on his tank (DK) the "dps sword" dropped in Ony 25. No one else wanted it so he rolled for it an won because "I'm saving it for the One-Handed run forging enchant in the next patch." Which means he intends to tank with this weapon, this statless weapon. About 3 of us tried to explain to him that we didn't believe it was worth it, that he would lose to many stats and the proc chance was slim but he seems to think it's going to be a great tank weapon for dual weild tanking.

Should I avoid running with him as my tank, or am I not seeing something?

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Moose, for what it's worth, I am still tanking with Last Laugh from Naxx, and then the Ony sword dropped I was given it and I got a bunch of congratulatory whispers from my guild mates. I was kinda surprised, because I dont really think it's worth it. I carry it around, but I dont tank with it. Maybe I should be, but it just doesn't seem right for a warrior at least.

That said, people in my vault/Ony pugs have tanked with it, and we had no problems, so I don't think I'd avoid the guy, it's not the worst thing he could be trying to tank with.

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OK, I already have my own opinions on this but I figured I'd ask you guys too since a majority of you are raiders and understand min/maxing and item worth.

Ony items: are any of you finding them worth it? My general opinion is no because studies have shown them to be a tier behind of everything similar in ilevel. However there is a member of my guild who seems to believe solely in the ilevel of gear. So when on his tank (DK) the "dps sword" dropped in Ony 25. No one else wanted it so he rolled for it an won because "I'm saving it for the One-Handed run forging enchant in the next patch." Which means he intends to tank with this weapon, this statless weapon. About 3 of us tried to explain to him that we didn't believe it was worth it, that he would lose to many stats and the proc chance was slim but he seems to think it's going to be a great tank weapon for dual weild tanking.

Should I avoid running with him as my tank, or am I not seeing something?

Are they as good as ToC items? Not in general. Are they better than Ulduar loot? Absolutely. As I understand it the proc on Quel'Serrar is OP for tanking. The Procs on say Vis'Kank and Deathbringer dont really make up for the lack of stats. but most of the other stuff in there has at least a niche place on some fights.

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Are they as good as ToC items? Not in general. Are they better than Ulduar loot? Absolutely. As I understand it the proc on Quel'Serrar is OP for tanking. The Procs on say Vis'Kank and Deathbringer dont really make up for the lack of stats. but most of the other stuff in there has at least a niche place on some fights.

Yeah, that's the thing, he's got a ToC 2 Hander but he's convinced that DK's will be getting shields in the future or that dual wield tanking is going to be way easier. So far his dual weapons consist of the Ony 25 DPS sword and a Naxx 10 sword.

I guess I'll just wait and see like Blue Rose suggested.

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This so hard. Lots of people don't seem to get this. At the end of the day, even for the top guilds in the world (except possibly a few corner cases that might have some stupid sponsorship deal or something), WoW is a game and is about fun, not about maximizing performance.

Granted, the game for many people - myself included - is in large part about maximizing performance, but there's a huge spectrum of players with different preferences for how much this is the case.

Right. I'm going to be the best Fury warrior I can be (when I'm actually dpsing). Or I'm going to decide I really don't like it and tell people "sorry, on this character I tank. Only tank." I'm not going to master something that's unenjoyable for me. Nor am I going to spend hours tweaking an interface, setting up custom events, and so on, to avoid "proc-watching" on Arms so as to remove the frustration and maybe make it fun.

But while I'll take steps to be the best I can be at what I do, I'm not going to do something different because it should perform better. Especially if I won't have fun.

OK, I already have my own opinions on this but I figured I'd ask you guys too since a majority of you are raiders and understand min/maxing and item worth.

Ony items: are any of you finding them worth it? My general opinion is no because studies have shown them to be a tier behind of everything similar in ilevel. However there is a member of my guild who seems to believe solely in the ilevel of gear. So when on his tank (DK) the "dps sword" dropped in Ony 25. No one else wanted it so he rolled for it an won because "I'm saving it for the One-Handed run forging enchant in the next patch." Which means he intends to tank with this weapon, this statless weapon. About 3 of us tried to explain to him that we didn't believe it was worth it, that he would lose to many stats and the proc chance was slim but he seems to think it's going to be a great tank weapon for dual weild tanking.

Should I avoid running with him as my tank, or am I not seeing something?

I wouldn't use Vis'kag to tank as a DK. Well, I might, but that's because of how far above my current weapons it is. But really, there's no stamina on it. I can't imagine using a weapon that has no stamina on it for tanking. Quel, yes. I use it for tanking. Granted I was upgrading from a Stoneguard, so there was really no question, but Quel is a tanking sword despite the lack of defense, and it does a great job.

Despite the lack of Stam, the speed at least is great for dual-wield tanking. I can imagine taking it if I had threat issues and my health was already solid.

So is everyone guilds planning on handling Shadowmourne?

10-man, we don't need to worry. Not sure how the 25-man group we've got with another guild will handle it, but I'd guess there's a good chance a member of my guild will get it, since our dps tend to be the entirety of the top 5, and that has an Arms warrior and a Ret paladin.

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So is everyone guilds planning on handling Shadowmourne?
I'm not sure how we're planning on handling it, tbh. It's not going to be an issue for a while anyway (since Shadow's Edge has to drop first before you can fuck with it), but my gut feeling is that the first edge will go to one of our DKs who tanks and DPSes. That makes the most sense, since we can get dual use out of it.

But I'm honestly not sure. We might just have them roll for it and then work on it from there.

Errr...maybe not. Shadow's edge is the axe you get from doing the first part of the quest, right? If that's the case I think you can basically have everyone trying ot get the legendary. It's kinda confusing to me now.

ETA part 2: ah, I see. The 'trick' is getting the 25 primordial saronite. Once you do that, you can start the questline. But those are the ones that drop from instances & you can likely buy. It's 23 emblems of frost per saronite. And given how awesome the T10 pieces are, it might be a while before you get that unless you have a concerted effort via guildies and/or alt farming badges galore.

I can't imagine that our guild will force people to donate their badges, at least not until everyone has their desired 4pT10 pieces. After that, we might. Most likely we'll try and sucker other people out of 'em.

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I don't see why a guild really has to have any input into it. Maybe you can't have each person do the same part of the quest at the same time (like get hit by Sindragosa's breath or do the blood thing) but for the most part everything looks to be independent. The only trick is whether the guild is going to give saronite for it or not. But that's not going to be many, if any at all.

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It will - but it won't be like Valanyr or anything like that, where you have to give them the things no matter what. I fully expect that after a couple months the orbs will be cheap enough that anyone not interested in getting the thing will be selling them. It might cost - like 25k or so - but that's not that big a deal.

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Could I ask, how many healers and dps are people using on Anub 10H? At the moment we are using two tanks, two healers, five dps and one offspec shadow-priest who sort of off-heals in phase 3. I really think we need to get by with two healers in phase 3 and have six dedicated dps, but I'm not sure we can get to him without three healers.

We also use two healers. A druid and a *gasp* shaman :P And we've not used any NR except for a totem, but I can see how that would be useful for people learning the encounter. Beacon Of Light is beyond lovely for phase 3 tank healing, I do manage to get by with riptided healing wave spam on the tanks.

I hate anub though. In all this time, normal and heroic, he refuses to drop me a shield :(

We finished off Ulduar achieves this week for our pretty and fast rusted proto drake. We only spent a couple of hours on one light in the darkness, finding it to be surprisingly caek. I hope people will be interested in going back for Alone In the Darkness once 3.3 drops. We still have to go back for random achieves for people who've missed things here and there.

The worst thing about Onyxia (well, one of the worst) is the class specific loot. Why oh why couldn't that have been dropped. I'd love my cow to walk around in a transcendence halo. Can't say there is too much interest in the loot for our group. We took a group of alts this week and still sharded everything that dropped. Sad.

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I'm pretty sure that, with regards to guilds handling Shadowmourne that'll be because - yes it is going to take a long time to accumulate that much primordial sauronite, especially at the beginning, but also because I suspect that the shards of the frozen throne that you need for the final step will be like the splinters of Atiesh or the fragments of Val'anyr.

I'm pretty pleased that 3.3 is finally coming, though rather less pleased that the price of all my crusader orbs just spiked downwards :P

Edit : yeah anub won't drop me a bloody weapon :(

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Good things to think about today -

- Crusader orbs and crafted gear using them (often very close to BiS) have just got way cheaper;

- Arctic Fur for sale for 10 Heavy Borean, thank you no more grind for non-dropping Arctic Furs;

- new heroic instances and new raids.

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So the fun continues. My rogue class leader just ninja transfered to go with the person who transfered because I asked them to not make half of an ex guildies face their forum avatar. :bang:

We have 2 other rogues, one of whom hasn't been on in weeks, and the other is pissed that his friend/CL transferred. I was down 2 officers the past 2 raids, I know one missed because his modem went out but the other just didnt show. My warrior CL hasnt made a raid in a week, our only other 2 warriors are both recruits one is maybe ok but just said he can't raid until January, and the other is both bad and annoying.

I have to miss the first 2 nights in ICC because I get to drive through a blizzard tommorow to go to fucking FARGO ND for a meeting the rest of the week.

But at least I've got elemental shaman who are to stupid to face the correct way on Yogg to avoid the pink insane lightning that I'm screaming at everone to not get hit by for the last 12 times its come out of yogg's head. I mean its not like with all 4 watchers up there is a grean piller of sanity restoring light that they could have run to or anything. If only someone would have asked people over vent to watch their sanity.

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