The View From Down Here

Being the Best Damn Tank you can be

“I never PUG. Almost every time I have been in a PUG I have regretted it.”

-Tankette, here

A common point of view, and it’s one that I myself have espoused in the past, here.  I have, however, come to realise that there is an infinite amount of learning to be done in pick-up groups. As Forrest Gump might have said, you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get.

Obviously there can be warning signs, such as struggling with healing on the first few pulls, and if that’s the case I wouldn’t hesitate to drop the group as quickly as possible, whicle being polite but firmly honest. My usual line is something based around the following:

“I’m very sorry, but something isn’t quite right here. I’ve had to blow Last Stand and Shield Wall to stay alive in the first two pulls, so I don’t think this is the best instance for this group today. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time by trying bosses that we’re not going to get down so I think it’s best if we all skip this run. Thanks for the run anyway.”

It works, reasonably well. I hang around in the group for a couple of minutes and everyone is generally polite – there’s nothing worse than a group where no-one will admit there’s a problem. Generally speaking, there will even be agreement from other people in the party.

Anyway, although a stress-free life means that you should avoid pugging, in this case I recommend the stress. The more and more unexpected things that can happen in a run – people breaking the wrong crowd control, nuking the wrong target, pulling something unexpected – the better you will get at reacting to these events and  therefore better at reacting to events which aren’t entirely within your control, such as any encounter where the raid is swamped with more and more attackers (eg. Gothik the Harvester).

The more you run with unfamiliar people, the better you’ll be able to react when the unexpected happens in one of your guild’s raids. You might not enjoy it so much as a sub-30 minute clear of Utgarde Pinnacle with your guild (incidentally, still no Red Sword of Courage), but it will make you a far better player in the long run.

So, when you have an hour or two to spare, give it a go. Open the LFG pane and join the LookingForGroup channel. One short sentence is all you need:

Tank/Healer/Whatever LFG any heroic

It may not be the fastest run, and you may come across any number of nefarious or just plain bad players, but you’ll have learned far more at the end of it than if you had taken a bunch of your guild mates who know you so well that you can predict their every move, and vice-versa.

Go on. What have you got to lose, other than a bit of spare time and a repair bill?

Strategisin’

I remember my first time tanking a level 70 instance – it was Shadow Labyrinth. This was Shadow Labyrinth pre-nerf, of course. Pulls were very tightly spaced, with a mere split-second between a good and a bad pull, particularly when entering the second and third boss’s rooms. Each pack had a number of different creatures with different abilities, and it was very necessary to work out which ones to CC, which to kill first, and so on. Admittedy it was less necessary to bother with crowd control as time went on and we got better gear, but crowdcontrol was never really something that went away. Witness the huge pulls in parts of the Shattered Halls.

It struck me recently that I’ve not seen a single trash pull in any of the Lich King instances where crowd control has been anything other than a nice, and entirely optional, bonus. Hell, a combination of improved warrior AoE threat and the smaller pulls means that the vast majority of the time everyone just lets rip with whatever area of effect spells they can muster and wait for the pack to die.

The challenge of working out a decent strategy for big pulls given the resources available to me is one I’m missing a great deal. The only thing that comes close, so far as I can see, is the Obsidian Sanctum encounter when running with one or more of the optional drakes up. Unfortunately, that is an order of magnitude harder than working out which things to kill first in a trash pull ever has been (and rightly so). There doesn’t seem to be anything between the two, not really.

Where will the next generation of raiders learn to tune their strategies? I suspect Ulduar will be a brick wall for a great many people because it will be the first time that it’s really no longer possible to brute-force an encounter. I can already imagine the cries for the instance to be nerfed and it’s a shame, because the learning curve at the moment just doesn’t seem quite right.

Puggin’ annoying

Ah, yes, that was it.

Pugging has a whole set of rules to it that nobody seems to agree on. But when it comes to pugging heroics, it seems to me that there needs to be rather more etiquette on how to behave than there currently is.

When you’re running a normal instance, it doesn’t cost anything for a member of the group to drop out – at the very worst you can re-run the instance from the beginning with no penalty. However, when it comes to heroics, that doesn’t apply. Consider if you will, a medium-length heroic instance like Halls of Lightning (because this is where this happened to me).

Halfway through the run, the healer decides to up and leave because one of his guild has asked for a healer for a different instance. Bear in mind that this is by no means a problematic run – we’d downed the first two bosses in very much short order without too much of a problem.

Now, in a normal instance, it would not be too much of an issue to get another healer in. At worst, as I said, we could reset the instance and then carry on from the beginning. However, this is a heroic. No pug healer, when faced with two groups for the same instance, is going to choose the one that gets him fewer Emblems of Heroism. It just isn’t going to happen, unless that healer knows a member of the party and owes them a favour (unlikely, because if there were a healer around, I wouldn’t have pugged one).

So, to add to the already unwritten rules of pugging:

• Make the tank the leader so he can mark
• Greed on the Frozen Orbs

I’d like to add another rule:

• Don’t skip out on a heroic group mid-run unless it’s for a genuinely good reason

I know no-one who I’m talking about will ever follow the rule, but really, is it too much to hope for? By skipping out on everyone mid-run without so much as an apology you’re not only coming across as incredibly rude, you’re also quite likely stopping the rest of the group from finishing the instance.

Oh, and a small postscript to the Death Knight who grouped with me yesterday and claimed he’d been miraculously ported to Dalaran rather than zoning into the instance: Don’t lie about having hearthstoned. I can see your castbar. If you want to drop out before we start, that’s fine. Just say so.

Back in the Saddle Again

Finally, after an unplanned two-week break I’m back. And what has changed since the last time I logged in? I’m happy to say that auction house prices are down, but other than that everything is pretty much the same. I just had time to gain the Merrymaker title before the end of Winter Veil too.

Looking ahead, I’m falling into the raiding pattern I had pre-WotLK. There are an ever-decreasing number of quests for me to do, but I’m going to keep ploughing through as and when I get the time. Next task, I think, is to level my fishing up. I’m already fed up with dailies, but at least I’ve hit Honored with Sons of Hodir so I can use their enchants.

I did have a big long rant I’d intended to post, but I’ve forgotten what it is now. Ah well, until the next time…

Happy Winter Veil!

The dreaded Real Life has struck, so I haven’t been playing for the last week or so. In any case, a very happy festive season to everyone who’s read and commented over the past year. Normal service will be resumed in the New Year.

Say, what?

“I don’t want the tank to mark. I’d rather we kept some chaos, keep things interesting.”

Er, what? The above was what greeted me as I joined a pug for Heroic Nexus yesterday. It wasn’t even the healer that said that – it was one of the DPS. I had reservations straight away, but I carried on anyway. We did dispatch the bosses in reasonably short order, so I can’t complain too much – contrast to the Azjol’Nerub pug I had done the previous day that I ditched two pulls in after having to blow cooldowns to stay alive on both. I hate ditching any group, but all that would have happened with them would be getting stuck on the second or last bosses, saved to the instance so I couldn’t attempt it with a better healer. There are times when things just don’t work, and I think it’s better to be honest about them up front and apologise for leaving than to get everyone in a situation where nothing gets downed. (Incidentally, what is it with mages? I don’t think I’ve found a single mage recently that’s managed to put out more damage than me over the instance. This is somewhat distressing.)

Encouraging chaos is a dangerous attitude to have. Ordinarily on guild group runs I’ll just mark the first target (and even then only sometimes), trusting everyone else to follow whatever I’m actively targeting, and for the most part it works. In a pug, though? Especially on the first few pulls where I’m getting a feel for each person’s threat, it’s a good idea to mark, so I can see everyone hitting one target and make a call as to who gets my Vigilance.

It’s just plain sensible to kill targets in order – it means the damage coming onto me is lower so the healer has to work less hard, and it’s far easier for me to hold threat on everything at once. Chaos is all well and good, but it’s far better to have a cleaner, faster run by doing things the sensible way. Give me order any day – it’s faster and easier. I’ll happily reserve chaos for those times when a pull goes awry and we end up pulling far more than I’d intended. The rest of the time, it just slows us down and makes both tank and healer have to work ten times harder than they would otherwise.

So, just say no to not marking, especially in pickup groups where nobody knows each other and you can’t second guess their intentions.

Burning Crusade all over again

One of the biggest problems I had early on in The Burning Crusade was getting hold of a decent tanking weapon. The Sun Eater never dropped for me, despite countless runs into the Mechanar. King’s Defender took almost as long to drop – I was still carrying Grom’tor’s Charge when I went into Tempest Keep for the first time!

Now, it looks as if history is repeating itself. True, I have my Eternally Folded Blade, but will King Ymirion give up the coveted Red Sword of Courage? Hell no. It seems I’m resigned to hoping that I’ll see the Naxx-10 trash sword before the Utgarde Pinnacle one drops.

Also, what’s with all the slow tanking weapons? I know Death Knights can dual wield tank, but even with two slow one-handers, parry gibbing is going to cause problems, surely?

This is the frustration I see – lots of tanking weapons, but none dropping. And half the ones available are severely non-optimal in terms of speed.

Easy to get, hard to keep.

Apparently a problem that was apparent in The Burning Crusade was that tanking gear was too easy to get hold of – people were able to hit the then-magic number of 490 defense without having nearly enough stats to run Karazhan sensibly.

I seem to recall that this was mentioned in one of the discussions at Blizzcon or the Worldwide Invitational, and that it would be harder for tanks to reach the new number (540 defense skill) this time around.

This hasn’t been the case – with minimal reputation farming, I was able to get all the rep-based defense pieces and get to 540 defense with minimum hassle and gemming / enchanting straight defense on almost nothing. In fact I found it so easy that I went back and re-enchanted some gear for health rather than defense, I was so far over the limit.

Now, however, I have a problem. Almost all the heroic and Naxx-10 gear I’ve come across has hardly any defense rating in comparison. True, once I’ve made my armor plated combat shotgun and sorted out the titanweave enchant on my cloak, I’ll be a bit healthier, but at the moment it’s disheartening to see all these upgrades drop and then have to grub around trying to work out how to get my def skill up again.

So, no, it wasn’t hard to reach uncrittable status. It’s a lot harder to keep it (and the next time someone refers to 540 defense as a cap, I’ll scream. It’s not a cap – every skillpoint over 540 gives you more avoidance and block).

In other news, I’ve seen plenty of Naxx bosses now. And the one thing about Naxx that strikes me is that while the encounters are a lot of fun, it’s a horribly ugly instance especially compared to everywhere else in lich king. Half the textures look like they’ve been borrowed from Undercity too. WTB [more Eye Candy] please!

Loken!

I’ve been having a lot of fun running heroics recently. Everything has seemed to be achievable, and even if we haven’t downed a boss the first time, the subsequent times hve always been an improvement.

Until yesterday, when I ran Halls of Lightning on heroic difficulty for the first time. Loken appears to be a fight that’s tuned so finely it might as well be a musical instrument. There’s far too much in the way of things going on in comparison to the rest of the heroics. Not all heroic bosses have been comfortable, but they have been achievable, until this one. I don’t understand why it’s so much harder than anything else – but it appears to be. Everyone needs to move on the split second in order to succeed at not getting killed on the lightning nova, and having an AoE healer, like a shaman seems to be a must.

It’s a shame – I really like the design of Halls of Lightning. The fact that the hardest 5-boss in the game is five times harder than any boss I’ve yet seen is very disheartening though.

A Heroic Adventure

So, since I hit level 80, what have I been doing with my time? The answer in the main, is Heroic Instances.

Also, I have been breaking one of Namthe’s Rules for a Strees-Free Life. I have been pugging a lot of these.

Thus far, then, I’ve got hold of enough emblems of heroism to get hold of my Chained Military Gorget, and I’ve learnt a lot about how to stay alive when the healer just doesn’t cut it.

It has astounded me that so many people have managed to make it as far as level 80 without replacing their Tier 4, or even worse, level 70 heroic gear. There’s just no excuse when you see the wealth of items available from quests and dungeons, and I don’t understand the mentality that seems to think that because it’s epic it must be better than a blue item.

As a tank, I have to replace all my gear in order to remain uncrittable (though I’ll admit there are still a couple of Black Temple pieces I haven’t yet got rid of). I suppose it’s all too easy for other classes to take the quest reward that can be vendored for the most money rather than the one that’s best for you.

In terms of heroic instances, too, I’ve developed a special hatred for the Violet Hold. Wiping on the second boss means you have to do the first again, with no loot? If your healer dies, you’re stuffed if you don’t have a way of ressing him, once you’re out of combat? I’m not impressed with it at all, though I still need to keep going back there to try to get the tanking legplates.

In non-WoW news, I completed my NaNoWriMo novel earlier today too. So posting frequency should head back to normal as we move back into raiding more.