Cataclysm

[caladein]

Yeah, I Imagine that if it wasnt for the fact that there are only like 18 trash mobs in the entirety of BWD, you would probably have had to CC stuff in there too.

At least with my guild, we only recently stopped using at least one CC or kiter on the dog packs.

[Maledict]

I didn't know you could CC the dog packs!

They tried something new in BWD with trash, so there was a much smaller amount of it and it was bigger and more "boss like". (Partly because it was basically all the bosses of BWL). I quite liked that approach to be honest - it was more fun, and more fluid, than the BoT trash where I had to spend several minutes before each pull marking everything.

Until of course we discovered Ring of Frost works on almost every mob in the pack, and a single mage allows you to CC everything so easily it felt like cheating... :)

[caladein]

I don't think they can be pinned down with proper CCs or otherwise our months-long use of disarms on the big guy and mages kiting the dogs around would make no sense at all.

Of course, now we just have one tank on the big guy and one tank with both dogs and there's no issues.

[Rendakor]

Um, I missed something here. CC has been used in raiding since the very first dungeon (MC - even had a boss fight with it built in). The only instances I *can't* remember CCing things in are AQ40, Naxx 25, ToC and Icecrown Citedal. Every raid in TBC used CC, and BoT isn't called Bastion of Trash for nothing. If you weren't using CC on those packs when the dungeons first came out I'd be impressed, as packs of 12+ NPCS with healers have a tendancy to splat raids hard. Hell, Tempest Keep was  *reknowned* for it's brutal trash that was often harder than the bosses themselves - everyone was CCing those desperately.

CC is a fundamental part of raiding and dealing with trrash - always has been. From MC through to SWP and to BoT. Yes, you can eclipse it with gear as it gets nerfed, but thats just what happens in 5 player instances.

Emphasis mine, which for some players represents the majority of their raiding experience. I never raided in vanilla or BC; among WotLK raids, Ulduar was a love-it-or-hate-it outlier (hated it) and none of the other raids except maybe RS required any CC. For people like me, the sudden reliance on CC in both 5ms and raids was a strong shift in playstyle (although in raids, we only ever CCd one of the two healers in the two roaming packs at the BoT door).

[caladein]

You used CC in ICC at least during the first two bosses' sets of trash, Blood Wing trash, and maybe on LK if you were a Priest or Paladin.  I know because I can still remember all the time I spent spamming Shackle because some DK or Paladin couldn't watch their AoEs or DoTs.

[Rendakor]

I've heard of Shackling in Blood Wing, but we never did it; just burned the tactician then AOE'd the rest down. We never CC'd any of Marrowgar's trash either, and LDW's shit we just LOS pulled back to the door.

[Ingmar]

I've heard of Shackling in Blood Wing, but we never did it; just burned the tactician then AOE'd the rest down. We never CC'd any of Marrowgar's trash either, and LDW's shit we just LOS pulled back to the door.

Early on we did a little CC on Marrowgar stuff, I don't remember CCing anything else though.

[Paelos]

I didn't CC anything in ICC. I didn't CC anything in Ulduar (although we only did up to the Cat Lady. ToC, unless you count the Champs, which I don't. Naxx? I think we may have shackled some stuff occasionally like those flying screamers early on. That didn't last long.

You certainly didn't CC stuff in MC except for the two lizardthing fights like Domo. I don't remember doing much CC in BWL, but then again all my memories are of smashing my face into Vael for 2 months. Didn't do any AQ. Almost nobody did Naxx 1.0, so I don't count it.

TBC was where you saw the CC make it's hay in raiding. Frankly, that's a period I'm loathe to compare to anything, and certainly didn't mind seeing go away. But no! We're bringing back the hits!

[Maledict]

I didn't CC anything in ICC. I didn't CC anything in Ulduar (although we only did up to the Cat Lady. ToC, unless you count the Champs, which I don't. Naxx? I think we may have shackled some stuff occasionally like those flying screamers early on. That didn't last long.

You certainly didn't CC stuff in MC except for the two lizardthing fights like Domo. I don't remember doing much CC in BWL, but then again all my memories are of smashing my face into Vael for 2 months. Didn't do any AQ. Almost nobody did Naxx 1.0, so I don't count it.

TBC was where you saw the CC make it's hay in raiding. Frankly, that's a period I'm loathe to compare to anything, and certainly didn't mind seeing go away. But no! We're bringing back the hits!

Were you doing the instances when they first came out, or later after the gear flation had made them a bit easier?

The reason I ask this is because if you weren't using Cc on some of the packs before XT, and before Kologarn, then you're guild was damn good at the game. Every guild I knew (and my own) was using CC there because the combo of healers and one shotting spellcasters generally meant raid death if you didn't.

In MC, outside of the Major-domo fight, you used CC on Garr (Banish the elementals), and you also used CC on the fire packs leading from Garr's room up to Golemagg / MD as the fire elemetnals would simply one shot non-tanks when the instances were first being done. BWL you used CC on the two wyrmkin packs after Vael and the goblin trash packs after Broodlord.

(Note by Cc, some of what I mean involves a mage or hunter kiting stuff around as it was too deadly to leave alone, but couldn't be CC'ed using poly etc. I think we can all be grateful 5 player instances don't ask that of groups... :) ).

[Ingmar]

We were terrible, did Ulduar at release in our Naxx gear, and never CCed any of that stuff (in 10.)  

Perhaps the confusion just comes down to people talking about 10 vs 25.

[Paelos]

I didn't do it in 25. I did Ulduar in 10, never CC'd anything.

No we never did anything cutting edge. We always waited until they had let the people who wanted "challenge" to get their crack at it.

Our nickname was "Mop Up Force." Dungeons were MUF Dives.

[Mattemeo]

We were terrible, did Ulduar at release in our Naxx gear, and never CCed any of that stuff (in 10.)  

Perhaps the confusion just comes down to people talking about 10 vs 25.

I know I shackled stuff when we were tentatively poking around in ICC. Did we ever beat it in the end? My laptop fried itself before I was even into the honoured rep. QQ.

[Ingmar]

We were terrible, did Ulduar at release in our Naxx gear, and never CCed any of that stuff (in 10.)  

Perhaps the confusion just comes down to people talking about 10 vs 25.

I know I shackled stuff when we were tentatively poking around in ICC. Did we ever beat it in the end? My laptop fried itself before I was even into the honoured rep. QQ.

"We" beat it in the sense that a group consisting MOSTLY of Slap people did, but I don't think we ever killed Arthas as a guild-only group, not sure. The raids we were running off the guild calendar stalled at Sindragosa.

[Maledict]

Ah, that's why. I'm talking 25 player raiding - in 10 player stuff you often can go without CC as the packs are vastly reduced in size in my experience. (Not done a huge amount of 10 player raiding however). In 25 it was absolutely necessery to be using CC in the circumstances I outlined, as those packs would simply gib the raid and / or the tanks on the pull without it.

[Merusk]

I did 25s for the entirety of Wrath, and was on the cutting although not bleeding edge.  We didn't CC stuff in Ulduar, Nax or ICC after the first week or two inside when we were taking it slow so we could learn what  the trash did.  Even that first week I think the most that was ever done was shackling.  Lots of LOS pulls, though.

[Sjofn]

We CC'd in Karazhan a fair amount, but that's the only one I can remember us doing it regularly.

[Fordel]

We CC'd in Karazhan a fair amount, but that's the only one I can remember us doing it regularly.

Those God Damn Ushers 

[Rokal]

Um, I missed something here. CC has been used in raiding since the very first dungeon (MC - even had a boss fight with it built in). The only instances I *can't* remember CCing things in are AQ40, Naxx 25, ToC and Icecrown Citidal.

AQ40 used CC iirc. You CC'd the packs before Twin Emps, and I think you CC'd some trash before the bug trio boss. You also CC'd in old Naxx. So, really, the only raids without CC were the Wrath ones.

Personally, I'm glad they finally get this and are acknowledging it publically. That being said, this has been going on for years. It was a major problem in running heroics in TBC. You addressed it in Wrath by giving more classes better tanking abilities and letting more people do AoE damage. Now, you're making the same mistake. Once again, I'll point out that CC is almost never used at the higest levels of your raiding content, yet you seem to enforce it on the "lesser" players for some reason.

They've acknowledged it multiple times. "Tanking has more responsibility than the rest of the group, and that makes it a less attractive role". This is the same problem every modern MMO has, not just WoW. Rift attempts to solve it by letting 3/4 classes in the game tank and making 'talent specs' really easy to change on the fly. That doesn't make tanking more attractive, it just spreads out the role so that almost anyone *can* tank a dungeon if they'd rather do that then wait for a tank to join the group. LOTRO is going to attempt to solve this by having trash in dungeons pre-marked.

The problem in TBC heroics was that CC was much more exclusive. It wasn't really that CC was needed in general, it was that only ~2 classes had reliable CC. Even sap sucked in TBC, you had to invest talent points into it just to make it a 90% chance not to throw you in combat (which still meant that you'd get smashed for 1/10 trash packs). If you tried running Shattered Halls heroic with a feral druid, a rogue, and a ret paladin, you'd get wrecked since you didn't have any reliable CC. Not only was it too much damage for most tanks/healers, but it was too hard to keep aoe threat back then unless you played a prot paladin. As a warrior tank you'd have to tab-target everything and sunder it to keep threat, and keep track of all the enemies in case you did lose aggro. Groups obviously tried to form without 3 mages, and tanking was that much harder/less appealing because of it. I think this accelerated the demand of aoe tanking for bears/warriors, especially late into TBC when it was fairly easy to over-gear the heroics and aoe tanking them became that much more viable.

They alleviated the CC exclusivity in Wrath by opening CC up to more classes (shaman, paladins) and making other CCs more easy to use (root usable in dungeons, relaxed target 'type' restrictions, sap no longer throws you in combat, freezing arrow and then later trap launcher, etc.), but at that point they had already re-worked all the tanks into aoe tanks and balanced the content for aoe tanking. They over-corrected the flaws of TBC 5-mans by fixing CC *and* emphasizing aoe tanking, and Cata finally has let people try the old style of content without having only two viable classes for CC.

Side note: I think most TBC heroics would probably suck if we tried them as end-game content today. Shattered Halls, Ramparts, Blood Furnace, the TK dungeons: these all had a ton of trash in them with very little variety between the first trash pack you kill and the last. They truly felt like padding, not 'mini-challenges'.

Part of the reason I like dungeons requiring CC in Cata is that it (maybe ironically) adds more variety to the dungeons. You may say there is little variety in sapping star, trapping square, and killing skull followed by X every dungeon, but think about the Wrath dungeons. You didn't have any trash enemies that really felt as unique as the packs in GB, the Shadowlancers in HoO, or the Tamers in ZA. Every enemy had to be fairly simple and (since your tank was always tanking 3-4 other things) couldn't really be that dangerous. Making dungeons use CC allows you to have more variety in enemies and lets them feel more dangerous, but lets your group control that danger instead of just relying on your healer to be a bad-ass.

[Paelos]

Actually, warrior AE tanking actually required some skill. There's not a single thing I did in Cata dungeons or raiding that felt remotely interactive besides marking targets and taunting.

[Rokal]

Good tanks in Cata help interrupt/stun targets, they move targets out of all the dangerous ground effects, they use their cooldowns more liberally since the content demands it and the cooldowns are lower. I'm having much more fun tanking on my bear in Cata than I did tanking on my warrior in Wrath, even with 1/3 the toolkit of a warrior.

I don't know, maybe you found running into every group in a dungeon and using shield slam, thunderclap, and shockwave on rotation more compelling? That was certainly all that was ever required of you to succeed in a Wrath 5-man.

I thought it was kind of hilarious that you used armory to look up my priest, but I'm beginning to wonder just how much Cata content you actually did before you judged the dungeons too hard and too tedious.

[Paelos]

Good tanks in Cata help interrupt/stun targets, they move targets out of all the dangerous ground effects, they use their cooldowns more liberally since the content demands it and the cooldowns are lower. I'm having much more fun tanking on my bear in Cata than I did tanking on my warrior in Wrath, even with 1/3 the toolkit of a warrior.

I don't know, maybe you found running into every group in a dungeon and using shield slam, thunderclap, and shockwave on rotation more compelling? That was certainly all that was ever required of you to succeed in a Wrath 5-man.

I thought it was kind of hilarious that you used armory to look up my priest, but I'm beginning to wonder just how much Cata content you actually did before you judged the dungeons too hard and too tedious.

Enough to get geared up to start running the raids. I think my gear was around 349-350 when I bailed out. You can armory it if you like, I have the same name. In randoms we pretty much only got GB, Tol'vir, and HoO with any regularity, but I went to deadmines a couple of time, Stonecore once. I ran em all over and over regular guildees. Killed that raid boss in the pvp place, ran about 4 raids in a row in BWD. That was it. Then, shit hit the fan. Healers started quitting in droves. The raid simply couldn't handle their shit. Last I checked they went to another guild, tried again, and I think have 2 bosses in BWD down, with 1 in that other place.

I don't think dungeons are too hard for me. That's never been the concern here by pretty much anybody. The point was that they were hard for people we were friends with, or pugs in general. People don't do dungeons in a vacuum. The tedium is just a symptom of me being tired of Blizzard's shit, which you regularly call "burnout." I want them to put the challenge where it belongs, and stop treating five man content like it's suppose to be a raid. It's supposed to be something we all do to pass the time and have fun with anyone we happen to want to play with. However, it seems to be a problem that's getting expressed in more than just simple dissatisfaction amongst the playerbase.

EDIT: Also, interrupts? Really? If that's challenging to you as a tank, you're a fucking knob. Also, the reduced cooldowns thing was introduced a while back. It has nothing to do with changes in Cata.

[Rokal]

EDIT: Also, interrupts? Really? If that's challenging to you as a tank, you're a fucking knob. Also, the reduced cooldowns thing was introduced a while back. It has nothing to do with changes in Cata.

Having to help with interrupts isn't necessarily challenging, but it's more engaging (which is the word you used). Having to do my rotation correctly as a rogue isn't exactly challenging either, but it's much much engaging than it was previously (build combo points with mutilate or sinister strike depending on your spec, keep Slice and Dice up, use evis).

When you have to watch out for the healing mob in a trash pack (or maybe something like the Shadowlancers in HoO) and help interrupt it (either because your dps sucks or because they used their interrupt on a damaging spell that mob or another cast), that's one more thing for you do do besides using shield-slam and your two aoe threat abilities. There is much more room for you to play well and make a big difference in your group for every class/role in Cata.

They also made tanks interrupt for some boss fights, like Baron Ashbury in SFK. Originally there were 3 abilities to interrupt. I'd say most groups usually have one melee dps, so that covered 1/2 interrupts, and it was usually left to the tank to interrupt the less-frequent stuff like Stay of Execution (when the group had enough health) or Mend Flesh.

[Sjofn]

I totally interupted Stay of Execution when none of us had health to speak of by accident on my rogue, I like to think it made my healer's life much more exciting for a few minutes. 

[Paelos]

Right Rokal, except they realized people were too stupid to handle that many interrupts in a 5 man, so they took out mend flesh. BTW, a melee that does interrupts?   All they care about is their deeps, yo. Except Sjofn, but she posts here so is automatically smarter than 98% of the WoW population. Also she has like a billion tanks so it's just habit.

Also, I looked you up because I figured (rightly) that you probably did what everyone else did and switched away from your healer when Cata dropped. Happy coincidence that? But you were probably just bored and it has nothing to do with the shitty design of healing now. Everyone else felt the exact same way at the exact same time. How odd!

[Maledict]

We actually had more healers in Cata than we did previously. My MT and a DPS both switched over to healing in Cata because they enjoyed it more, so we ended up asking the resto druids to switch to Boomkin spec all the time... :)

[Ingmar]

I'm a little confused, I've been interrupting as a tank since 2004.

[Paelos]

I'm a little confused, I've been interrupting as a tank since 2004.

I honestly have no idea where he's going with this either, but it's amusing.

[Rokal]

I've been playing my priest more lately and he's done enough heroics at this point to be able to queue for ZG/ZA. Frankly, healing is pretty much like I remember it always being, since I didn't play much in Wrath. I spent ~4 years playing a healing priest when healing emphasized mana conservation and then played about 2 month of Wrath where it had changed. Healing in Cata feels like it always has to me, but I realize if you played much of Wrath as a healer then Cata healing was probably much more disruptive. I totally believe that some players in your guild that liked healing in Wrath found that they didn't like healing in Cata.

More anecdotal experiences: in my guild healers are the least 'needed' class for raids or 5-mans. The healers that do raid enjoy healing, and would rather not DPS. It's one of the reasons we do Cho'gal, Nef, and Chimaeron with 3/4 healers when most guilds use 2/3. Our tanks are usually happy to switch things up and dps if they get the opportunity, but typically in guild chat you see "1-2 more dps for a heroic, anyone want to go?"

I realize that this is the opposite of the state of the game as the LFD shows (Tanks>Healers>>>>DPS) but there are definitely people out there that like the new tanking/healing models in Cata. I think they're probably just more inclined to run dungeons/raids with friends or guildies, rather than random strangers that could be complete asshats. Even if I don't need a random heroic on my priest/druid at this point, I'll probably join guildies who are running one and need another person, but I'm not going to subject myself to the RNG/LFD queue if I don't have to.

I've actually met quite a few nice people in LFD, but I know I'll never see them again. The bad experiences stick out much more too.

I'm a little confused, I've been interrupting as a tank since 2004.

Did you really feel that you needed to interrupt in Wrath, and especially in 5-mans? Did you feel that it greatly benefited your group to do so? My experiences are the opposite. There wasn't much to interrupt, and the things you could interrupt in 5-mans didn't really matter. Sure, you *could* interrupt the caster in a group of 5 that was casting lightning bolt #5 at you, but if the lightning bolt was cast it wasn't really going to impact your group in any major way. Each enemy did less damage individually because it was expected that you would be aoe tanking them.

I remember when I first started Wrath, I was actually trying to use CC in the dungeons, and was interrupting casters. Tanks seemed annoyed that I was trying to use CC and would just damage the mob I CC'd anyway, and whether I interrupt a caster or not didn't seem to matter. Why bother?

[Lantyssa]

I'd bet $10 Ingmar would have to be physically restrained to not interrupt something, whether it mattered or not.

[Merusk]

I interrupted as a 5-man tank in wrath because it made MY life easier, Fuck the group. I was a happy mind-freezing, strangulating, death-gripping DK.

[Fordel]

I'd bet $10 Ingmar would have to be physically restrained to not interrupt something, whether it mattered or not.

No, he just interrupts it 1 second AFTER the cast because he sucks. 

[Minvaren]

Did you really feel that you needed to interrupt in Wrath, and especially in 5-mans? Did you feel that it greatly benefited your group to do so?

I remember there was great benefit to interrupting the fire guys just past Ick and Crick in PoS.   Namely, you didn't wipe in a PuG.  (/anecdote)

[Rendakor]

I'd bet $10 Ingmar would have to be physically restrained to not interrupt something, whether it mattered or not.

That's probably fun on Maloriak.

[Soulflame]

I remember interrupting those bastards in one of the spider instances, and a warrior tank yelled at me because he wanted to use spell reflect.  It was reflexive for me, because it was one of those bastards with the 10s cast and it hit for 25k.

I was, of course, the healer.   

[Sjofn]

I remember interrupting those bastards in one of the spider instances, and a warrior tank yelled at me because he wanted to use spell reflect. 

Oh my God, you have no idea how many times I heard that particular WHINE come from Ingmar.