World of Warcraft General Discussion

[Gary_Robson]

@Blaster_Master

I made a post about this recently on another WOW board, and while that rule of thumb is correct more often than it’s not, it’s usually only really true with simple tank and spank situations, it’s important to not to use it as the sole justification to blame someone.

Certainly. I posted the same thing as Shot From Guns about 50 posts ago, but it’s obviously an oversimplification. I was in a group where the healer was doing a bit of DPS between heals. He took a shot at a mob that my mage had sheeped. The sheep spell broke, the mob attacked the priest, and I couldn’t pull it off in time. Dead priest. NOT the tank’s fault. Just a stupid healer.

Another time, a tank charged into a group of mobs while the healer was out of mana and drinking. The tank died. NOT the healer’s fault.

[Shot_From_Guns]

Blaster Master, you’re absolutely right, which is why I specified that the rule breaks down more in raiding. There have been plenty of times when I’ve died because the DPS wasn’t burning the boss down fast enough (DPS’s fault, not the healers’), or say when OTing on KT and I couldn’t see the void zone that killed me because the scarabs were stacked right on top of me (my fault for not positioning my camera better, possibly with a finger in Blizz’s direction for making the mobs stack right on top of you like that). But the “rule of thumb” *is *going to be applicable for a lot of the situations that newer players like **Quasi **find themselves in.

In general, the DPS are going to be the most culpable because their role is the easiest. They might not like to hear it, but it’s true. The first time I went into an instance as DPS instead of as a tank, I lost all respect for bad DPSers–the job is just so much easier than tanking.

@FlightlessBird

Healers - when I heal I find myself watching peoples health bars more than the actual fight. This takes away from the gameplay for me. I want to see the big monster animations.

This applies to tanks, too–I never really get to see anything the boss is doing unless there’s a specific animation I’m watching out for (e.g., the flash on Grob that shows when he’s just dropped a poison cloud). Otherwise, I’m watching the HUD that throws up bars for me and my target, my cooldowns, the timers and warnings that BigWigs is throwing up, the ability alerts that MSBT is throwing up, debuffs on the boss, buffs and debuffs on myself, etc.

[Gary_Robson]

@Shot_From_Guns

The first time I went into an instance as DPS instead of as a tank, I lost all respect for bad DPSers–the job is just so much easier than tanking.

I know the new instances have changed the DPS roles a lot, but in the older instances, I used to get pissed a lot at DPSers that rated themselves only on how much they did on the damage meters. Some twit was gloating about beating me in the damage meters, and I pointed out that my role as a mage included:

1. “Sheep pulling,” where I would polymorph a mob right at the beginning of a fight, thus losing the first few seconds of dealing damage

2. Protecting the healer - any time he got aggro, I ran over, frost-novaed the mob to hold it in place and give the healer time to move away, and burned down the mob if the healer couldn’t shed the aggro

3. “Re-sheeping” mobs if we weren’t ready to take them when the timer was running down

4. Interrupting enemy spellcasters before they got off damaging spells (this is a biggie)

5. In some fights, I’d take charge of kiting around adds (or rooting them with my frost nova and my water elemental’s frost nova) so the tank and the other DPSers could focus on killing the main boss

6. Dumping my own aggro if it got too high by removing myself from the fight with invisibility (and ice block, if needed)

7. Removing curses as required

8. Dampen magic as required when fighting lots of spellcasters (this is a dangerous and tricky one, because it dampens heals, too)

A DPSer who doesn’t do anything but watch the damage meters and spam fireballs or frostbolts isn’t doing his job.

[Bosstone]

@InvisibleWombat

A DPSer who doesn’t do anything but watch the damage meters and spam fireballs or frostbolts isn’t doing his job.

Mages definitely have their bag of utility tricks, but what about Hunters? So far as I can tell, every ability a Hunter has is designed to increase DPS. Sure, there’s a few outliers like Freezing Trap and the Stings that aren’t Serpent, but I haven’t found a good use for the latter yet and the former is only minor CC and a waste of the Hunter’s time.

Granted, I haven’t taken my Hunter into an instance with a real group yet, but as far as I’ve been able to determine, a Hunter’s job is to latch the pet onto the target, apply a Sting, then spam Steady Shot until the target dies. If the target is dangerous, pop Rapid Fire first. If the target is still alive when the Sting disappears, reapply it. Repeat as necessary.

[Tom_Scud]

Hunters are interesting because they can basically CC 2 things at once: not only using the freezing trap on one guy, but also by sending their pet off on a kamikaze mission against a second enemy, keeping him busy while the main party burns down the other 3 from the pull in question. I had an awesome hunter DPS who worked like that when I was tanking a four-man group through Sunken Temple.

[Redwing]

@Bosstone

Mages definitely have their bag of utility tricks, but what about Hunters? So far as I can tell, every ability a Hunter has is designed to increase DPS. Sure, there’s a few outliers like Freezing Trap and the Stings that aren’t Serpent, but I haven’t found a good use for the latter yet and the former is only minor CC and a waste of the Hunter’s time.

Granted, I haven’t taken my Hunter into an instance with a real group yet, but as far as I’ve been able to determine, a Hunter’s job is to latch the pet onto the target, apply a Sting, then spam Steady Shot until the target dies. If the target is dangerous, pop Rapid Fire first. If the target is still alive when the Sting disappears, reapply it. Repeat as necessary.

Hunters and locks have been mostly taken out of the CC role. There’s something like 6 pulls with banishes in WotLK raids, and frost traps are nice if you’re still kiting chow on Gluth. BC instances had more stringent CC requirements, at least pre-3.0.

Hunters, at least, still have MD duties, and the additional threat is important when you’re trying to allow your dps to go all out (Hodir hard mode).

[Shot_From_Guns]

@InvisibleWombat

I know the new instances have changed the DPS roles a lot, but in the older instances, I used to get pissed a lot at DPSers that rated themselves only on how much they did on the damage meters.

There are still DPS that do this. They are bad DPS. More often than not, they’re the ones who die to the void zone they didn’t see because they were too busy staring at the meters. If I had my way, no one would have access to meters but RLs and assists.

@Redwing

BC instances had more stringent CC requirements, at least pre-3.0.

BWAHAHAH. BC instances? *CC requirements? *Are you serious? One of the main complaints about BC was the tank-and-burn mentality it promoted, which tended to make Paladins the default tanks for things like Heroics, because of their strength at AOE tanking. God forbid you tried to tank an instance as a Warrior and ask people to CC or focus fire–you’d get your head bitten off. (Note that this was when TC hit a max of four targets, Shockwave didn’t exist, no glyph of Sunder Armor, etc.)

[Bosstone]

@Redwing

Hunters, at least, still have MD duties, and the additional threat is important when you’re trying to allow your dps to go all out (Hodir hard mode).

MD? That’s a term I haven’t encountered yet. Main Damage?

[Redwing]

@Bosstone

MD? That’s a term I haven’t encountered yet. Main Damage?

MisDirect. Your next three shots add threat to your focus instead of to you. Usually used to pull, and usually the first shot used is Distracting Shot (unless the mob is immune to taunt). Also, always followed by FD (Feign Death). In intense dps races, the hunters will set up a MD rotation (as a tank may only be the focus of one hunter’s MD at a time) to increase the tank’s threat, and allow the dps to go farther before reaching the threat cap. In solo play the MD focus is the hunter’s pet, allowing the hunter to do more damage before the mob closes to less than the hunter’s minimum range distance.

[Bosstone]

Ah, gotcha. I know Misdirect though I don’t have it yet, just not the TLA for it.

[Shot_From_Guns]

Bosstone, my head immediately translated “TLA” into “**Three **Letter Acronym,” which almost lead me to reply, “Don’t you mean TLA?”

:smack:

[Bosstone]

Thank you. That’s the best laugh I’ve had so far this week.

[Blaster_Master]

@Shot_From_Guns

Blaster Master, you’re absolutely right, which is why I specified that the rule breaks down more in raiding. There have been plenty of times when I’ve died because the DPS wasn’t burning the boss down fast enough (DPS’s fault, not the healers’), or say when OTing on KT and I couldn’t see the void zone that killed me because the scarabs were stacked right on top of me (my fault for not positioning my camera better, possibly with a finger in Blizz’s direction for making the mobs stack right on top of you like that). But the “rule of thumb” *is *going to be applicable for a lot of the situations that newer players like **Quasi **find themselves in.

In general, the DPS are going to be the most culpable because their role is the easiest. They might not like to hear it, but it’s true. The first time I went into an instance as DPS instead of as a tank, I lost all respect for bad DPSers–the job is just so much easier than tanking.

Fair points, and I just want to make sure that it’s out there that it’s not always true. When I used to PUG stuff on occassion, it was irritating to way outgear instances (remember the BC days of running Heroics in T6 gear for badges for gems?) and be doing very well and still get blamed because someone is horribly ungeared or not sure what they’re doing

This applies to tanks, too–I never really get to see anything the boss is doing unless there’s a specific animation I’m watching out for (e.g., the flash on Grob that shows when he’s just dropped a poison cloud). Otherwise, I’m watching the HUD that throws up bars for me and my target, my cooldowns, the timers and warnings that BigWigs is throwing up, the ability alerts that MSBT is throwing up, debuffs on the boss, buffs and debuffs on myself, etc.

This sort of problem applies to pretty much everyone to some extent. Sure, you have some DPSers who simply aren’t concerned about max DPS, or have macros (facerolling BM hunters from BC), but even DPS should be watching cooldowns, timers, procs, dodging fire, etc.

However, I’ve found that giving a lot of consideration to how my UI is organized made a big difference in my ability to see the fights which, consequently, also improved my performance and survivability. Most of the standard UI is very inefficient in terms of presentation and space usage, and my changes and been doing to keep as much of what I need as close to the lower middle area as possible, without getting cluttered, so there’s minimal eye and mouse movement between raid frames, CDs/durations, targets, and my actual toon, and there’s no screen clutter so I can see what’s going on around me. The stuff that isn’t as important, or I only need periodically, is pushed off in a corner (map, buffs, chat, and meters in one of each corner). By emphasizing minimal mouse and eye movement, I can glance at my raid frames very quickly, make a decision, and generally spend about 2/3s of any given cast/GCD actually watching what’s going on. The only times I really have problems keeping an eye out is in very healing intensive portions (like Frozen Blows on Hodir, Mimiron, etc.).

So, to make a long story short, if you’re finding you’re not seeing much of the fight, give consideration to reworking your UI.

[Redwing]

@Shot_From_Guns

There are still DPS that do this. They are bad DPS. More often than not, they’re the ones who die to the void zone they didn’t see because they were too busy staring at the meters. If I had my way, no one would have access to meters but RLs and assists.

I keep wondering who these people are who watch meters during the fights. Then we stopped doing Naxx on raid nights, so I pugged it a couple of times. Yikes. Then again, these are people who wanted to kick my pally for being last on the dps meters. My holy pally.

OTOH, I want everyone to have access to meters. Being able to go through all my casts during a fight, and those of my class helps me figure out where I could be doing better. I don’t care who’s at the top of the meter, but I do care about what they did differently than I did.

BWAHAHAH. BC instances? *CC requirements? *Are you serious? One of the main complaints about BC was the tank-and-burn mentality it promoted, which tended to make Paladins the default tanks for things like Heroics, because of their strength at AOE tanking. God forbid you tried to tank an instance as a Warrior and ask people to CC or focus fire–you’d get your head bitten off. (Note that this was when TC hit a max of four targets, Shockwave didn’t exist, no glyph of Sunder Armor, etc.)

Then you played with fail people. Badge running heroics with warriors wasn’t an issue as my wife and I could handle almost all CC (hunter/lock). And how’d you get past those first SwP pulls without CC (pre-patch)?

Gah. I nearly kicked a lock from my old guild for refusing to CC while running heroics in BC. Your personal dps is meaningless if your group can’t handle the pull, so summon your frigging Succy, and seduce away. I really miss being able to test a lock’s ability with something like H Mech: can you actually pay attention enough to seduce A, banish B, Fear pong C, and DoT D? Bonus test, when I dilberately pull and die, can you take over from me?

Between SwP and Uludar I don’t think I ever hit banish, enslave, fear or seduce outside of PvP. At least I get a couple of banishes a week now.

[jayjay]

Every time people start talking about raid stuff, I start to remember why I don’t do that part of the game. It sounds like WORK, not fun…

[Bosstone]

@jayjay

Every time people start talking about raid stuff, I start to remember why I don’t do that part of the game. It sounds like WORK, not fun…

This is sort of tangential, but you just sparked a rant. Lengthy grumbling incoming:

Over the weekend, my GF hit 60 on her Warlock and wanted to do the Dreadsteed epic mount quest chain. I tried to convince her to wait until 61 and just buy it from the trainer, but she’d have none of it. She wanted it that level, she wanted to save the money, and she wanted the experience.

The Dreadsteed, for those unaware, requires the completion of two three-quest chains, one four-quest chain, one quest in Scholomance, and one final quest in Dire Maul West (with a detour to Dire Maul East to get the key to West if you don’t have it already).

The first three quest chains aren’t actually that bad and can be done by the Warlock alone. However, Scholomance and Dire Maul are difficult level 60 instances, and good luck finding a group who wants to do those. Luckily, we know someone with an 80.

So we had a 60 Affliction Warlock, a 61 Retribution Paladin, a 60 Rogue (dunno spec) and an 80 Frostfire Mage for Scholomance. It wasn’t too difficult aside from the fact that none of use had been in there before, and we ended up slogging through the crypt full of jerk undead who managed to kill me twice before we realized that wasn’t where we wanted to be. Once we knew where to go, we got there easily enough.

After Scholomance, the Rogue dropped. We went to Dire Maul East, whereupon I got my ass kicked by the swarms of elite tree elementals and our Mage fell down a hole, eventually requiring a port out to Theramore and physically riding back to Dire Maul. Once we finally got the key, we had to fight to the end of Dire Maul West.

Keep in mind, my Paladin is not a tanking spec. He’s wearing plate, and he’s an AOE monster, but his talents are not geared to tanking and he’s got kinda crappy gear. The Mage had to be the tank simply by virtue of having 3x my HP, and I spent most of the time frantically casting Holy Lights which only restored maybe 15-20% of his health. And yet, because I was the Paladin, I managed to pull a ton of aggro onto myself. I wasn’t even running Righteous Fury, and I have Fanaticism. I died so often I nearly broke all my gear.

My GF insists she had fun, particularly at the end battle, but all I can think is that it was a horrific slog through a bunch of bastard enemies with lots and lots of boring runs from the graveyard. I know it’s not a typical scenario, but it really soured me on running instances. Even though I admit Dire Maul West LOOKED cool, it was a bad experience for me.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@Redwing

Then you played with fail people.

I should have specified: and this was why I hated running with anyone I didn’t know. But honestly, if someone has the choice of running with a Pally tank, who could hold everything while it gets AOE’d down, and a Warrior tank, who needed you to CC mobs and/or focus fire on one target at a time, why *wouldn’t *they pick the Pally? Now that Warriors have better AOE threat, I can’t remember the last time I had someone use CC in an instance or on trash mobs in a raid.

Too, DPS are even now really locked into a “you hold everything while I smack it right now and I shouldn’t have to wait” mentality. Part of the reason I’m in the guild I’m in now instead of the raiding guild I originally transferred servers to join is that their omgz uber leetz DPS couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea of the Warrior tank that they drastically overgeared needing a second or two to establish aggro, especially on a moving fight where the boss was out of range of any threat-generating abilities half the time. :rolleyes:

@jayjay

Every time people start talking about raid stuff, I start to remember why I don’t do that part of the game. It sounds like WORK, not fun…

For some people, work like this *is *fun. I enjoy the challenge of a new boss, learning the fights, getting new gear, tightening up my spec and my ability priorities to be the best tank I can be.

Bosstone, try running DM or Scholo with an appropriately balanced group next time (i.e., a real tank and, if you’re Ret instead of Holy, a real healer). I guarantee you’ll have more fun (assuming the people in question aren’t jerks or morons, of course).

[Bosstone]

@Shot_From_Guns

Bosstone, try running DM or Scholo with an appropriately balanced group next time (i.e., a real tank and, if you’re Ret instead of Holy, a real healer). I guarantee you’ll have more fun (assuming the people in question aren’t jerks or morons, of course).

Yeah, we were kind of a poor group, considering we were all basically DPS. Since I was the only one who could (sort of) tank and (sort of) heal, I had to handle both jobs. I’m probably going to dual-spec as Holy and Protection at 80, since once I get into raiding with the guild, I think the need for DPS will be a lot less. Holy in particular will be interesting; Paladins appear to have their own style of effective healing and aren’t just a poor man’s Cleric/Priest.

[The_Lurker_Above]

@Shot_From_Guns

BWAHAHAH. BC instances? *CC requirements? *Are you serious? One of the main complaints about BC was the tank-and-burn mentality it promoted, which tended to make Paladins the default tanks for things like Heroics, because of their strength at AOE tanking. God forbid you tried to tank an instance as a Warrior and ask people to CC or focus fire–you’d get your head bitten off. (Note that this was when TC hit a max of four targets, Shockwave didn’t exist, no glyph of Sunder Armor, etc.)

Sounds like someone wasn’t running 2.0.x heroics. Most of the trash in heroics was much harder than the bosses (Boglords, I’m looking at you) and the 5-7 mob pulls would utterly destroy any tank. If you were a DPS class without at least 1 good crowd control ability you simpily didn’t get invites.

For a good chunk of BC, untill heroic trash got a fairly major nerfing and MUDflation upped the gear for tanks and healers, AOE tanking whole instances just wasn’t possible.

[Yeticus_Rex]

As a level 80 Ret Pally, I’m still a newb when it comes to 5-mans and trying to do DPS without stepping over my boundaries. Now I’m beginning to think that I was the weak link in our 5 man runs a couple of nights ago. Demo was tanking and I was trying to stay behind him, but sometimes I moved in closer to do my Crusader Strike and to keep my FCFS cycle going with very little wait time; now I realize that I might have been pulling some of the mob, (or worse yet the Boss) onto me by proximity and not using a threat meter at all. Newb error on my part. If anyone who was with me in that group, please speak up and let me know if that was indeed the case. I just thought my job was to follow close behind the tank and just unload whatever I had in my arsenal.

Quasi, maybe you could transfer your char over to Cairne; it might be worth the money involved if it means playing with sane folks such as us…I’ve felt nothing but undying love over here! Feels good…(ooh, a little lower and to the right…ahhh, that’s it!)