Missing WoW at the moment. In Finland all week for work. On the plu sside at least I get to go to an ice hockey game tonight…
As Bosstone said, “how often that guy sees bear tanks”, “how many bears are there around” and “which are the best tanks” are completely different animals. I keep getting palatanks (of which roughly half “don’t believe in CC” and/or in the healer’s manabar), but I’m growing to be wary of them due to those strange religious beliefs some of them have… Didn’t PUG yesterday, my heroic of two days ago was a paladin unbeliever, the non-heroic on the same day a bear who not only did believe in the healer’s mana, but occasionally pop a heal on someone after a fight!
There’s times I seem to see nothing but unbeliving paladins (wish I could drop a snake trap into their goldplated pants), sometimes I get three teddys in a row, one of these last weekend days I kept getting warriors and DKs, some of which must have been a paladin’s alts (hint: if the healer says “tank, please don’t break the sheep”, you’re doing something wrong). I seem to see a lot more “I’m not tanking but I’ll 2.tank” DKs than other classes; 2.tank here means either grab the boss after the tank goes splat, grab (quite literally in this case) a mob which is trying to hit on the healer (no, pulling on me braids is not the right way t’ask fer a date, geroffme!), or tank some trash while we wait for a new tank because the first one was one of those first-boss farmers.
Skammer, this week was just a reboot. Hope you get better soon!
This is on your Holy Paladin right? I think the RDF will try to mix up classes as much as possible which is probably why you see so few paladins.
No joy with guilds on my pally tank so I have decided to switch my rogue over to Horde and play with a few ex-guildies who went to the dark side last year. He’s only level 51 so I’ll see the Outland and Northrend quests from the other side for the first time which will hopefully freshen it up for me a bit.
Hit exalted with my guild last night! Unfortunately, there was no achievment or even a mention in the guild news 
On the bright side, it did make me hit 40 exalted reputations, so i did get the sweet “the Exalted” title 
Also, it means you’re eligible to buy whatever you want from the Guild Rewards.
To everyone above, you’re all right, when one person notices a lack of bear tanks, it’s nothing, I was just asking here to see if it was ‘a thing’. Guess it isn’t. Still need some gear, though. I picked up one UG (trinket) in a H:GB run last night, and all the JPs, which was nice.
So is Moobird running heroics now, Bird?
So my worgen gets in a pug last night for Stockades, which ends up wiping twice then the tank over-pulls. Still my pet and I each leveled twice so it was worth it. The quest reward was a nice eyepatch but I hated to put away my top hat :(.
I forgot to hand in one of the quests, so I headed back to Stormwind to turn it in, and this is the first time I’ve been in Stormwind in literally years – since well before Wrath dropped. I’d never even seen the harbor before. Stormwind is pretty, but annoying as hell to navigate around. I imagine it’s not so bad if you can fly, but at level 25 it’s a pain.
Ah, yes, that could be it. As opposed to guild runs when we often have 3 paladins in a 5-man party.
Back when I made my shammy (in the weeks between the code change and Cata’s release), her first Stockades run featured the following sentence after the tank had run straight to the end of the corridor: “you do realize we’re not level 80, right?”
He did it again.
It’s one of the few times I’ve seen a tank kicked, I think the reason given was ‘can’t count’.
For some reason, Stockades seriously tempts tanks into over-pulls.
I think it’s that straight shot right down the hallway(s). It’s too tempting to just make a run for it.
I’m queuing for them, yes :rolleyes: I’m still giving everyone a note of warning when I zone in. And even with cc, I’m taking a ton of damage in the initial burst. Good news is I’m doing better at getting aggro! Keeping it is coming along too. 
Here’s an old, old article on why Bears are not necessarily as common as the other tank classes. It’s from 2009, so there’s plenty of outdated information, but some things still hold true, and even though there have been moves made toward making bears more viable in the past year, it’s hard to shake off deep stigmas.
Holy leveling, Batman! I haven’t started an alt since before The Shattering. I just started a Worgen and it feels like I’ve done hardly anything and I’m already level 13 with over 50 Quests Completed. :dubious: I didn’t even give her a Heirloom.
Also, I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting better at the game or they adjusted the difficulty level, but I’ve hardly died at all.
I haven’t played through the Worgen starting zone, but if it’s anything like the Goblin zone, it’s very theme-parkish. There’s not a lot of fighting and a whole lot of ‘jump in this vehicle, do this thing, get XP’, which doesn’t offer much risk of death. Even the risky sections are carefully scripted such that you’d basically have to be an idiot to die. (Of course, having experience does help you avoid acting like an idiot, so there’s that too. :D)
Really, while I like the new Cataclysm zones a lot, they do seem very much like self-contained theme parks. I was playing in Uldum last night and gleefully following the Harrison Jones quest chain. One mission has you riding tailgunner on a plane, shooting down enemy aircraft before you’re shot down. I started to get tense when I realized the enemy wouldn’t drop quickly enough and there were always two or three of them. Then I realized…there’s no actual life bar for the plane. The enemy wasn’t actually doing any damage. I probably could have gone to the kitchen and made a sandwich while the ride played out and successfully completed the quest. It wasn’t any different than a motion ride at Universal Studios; giving the illusion of danger while being completely safe.
Granted, some of the other areas are tough, and I’ve died many times in the 80+ zones. But the quest design in Cataclysm definitely involves a lot of entertaining but riskless quests.
Actually, the Worgen zone is a much more conventional kill-ten-mooks-and-one-boss model, with the occasional vehicle fight.
To me, the weird thing about Cataclysm quest design is that it’s forcing me to completely reverse risk-assessment habits I learned in TBC and WoTLK.
Used to be, if I’m given a quest to kill x mobs, that was pretty much a mindless zero-risk grind. And if I’m given a quest to kill some all-capital-names uber-mob, that’s either very dangerous to solo or certain death. Now? On 6 toons, I have died while soloing quest bosses (even elites) exactly zero times. All questing deaths have been through normal mobs, usually overpulls or other “oops” situations which, not being raid-geared any more, my toons don’t have to firepower to overcome.
It’s just weird. I can’t decide whether I like it or not. It certainly takes the point out of boasting “Yeah, I soloed that boss.”
Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I can burn down a boss pretty steadily, and I was even killing the giant statues attacking Schnottz’s camp before I realized I needed to get a vehicle. But normal mobs are dangerous enough that if two are on me I have to work very hard to stay alive, even as a Frost Mage. Ice Barrier just doesn’t have the oomph it used to.
The toughest quest I’ve done in Uldum so far was killing sailors for their uniforms; the spaces were so enclosed that it was easy to overpull, and at one point a sailor spawned three times in a row, instantly aggroing me without giving me a chance to get away or heal up. I used to be able to completely ignore food and rely on glyphed Evocation to heal up any damage; now I’m chomping through conjured food every couple of fights.
You don’t have to shrug over something like that. 
Hobbies develop friendships; I’m still on a board with people I played DAoC with almost a decade ago. People have married, had babies, graduated, shared family stories: it’s still a community, even without sharing the same game. Though of course most folk DO still game in one way or another… 
Hard to break some habits 
Anyway, stop shrugging and keep hugging. :hug:
Hey! My company’s internet filter is down today. Anyone want me to look up something on Wowhead or WowInsider for them? 