f13.net

X-server PUGs via the LFG system, coming soon!  Apparently the fix for the "Additional instances cannot be launched" also allows them to do x-server dungeon queues.  (Bets on it simply being load balancing?) 

 As a feature (and probably the only way to make it work right) you'll also be teleported into the instance once you have a full group.

Additionally, there will now be a way to flag yourself as "Leader" in the LFG system. If you're flagged as leader and your group completes the dungeon, you get a bonus/ reward of some sort.  They didn't explain exactly what it would be.

I don't see how this is bad. a pug is a pug...people are just as willing to be retards on your own server, getting people from others can't make that worse.

Maybe now I'll find enough people to run Oculus with me...

*I* don't think it's worse, but I've never had a pug problem.  I'm always willing to bail if I realize it's a failure group, so pugs don't bother me.   I know others don't feel the same, though.

You can blacklist the retards when you're just dealing with your own server.

Considering that with this you can probably bail, re-queue, and be in another group in seconds I'd say that it's not going to be a problem.

Would be wonderful if coupled with a player rating system. Sadly, the same system would be abused.

Still, an improvement.

The problem with blacklisting is that the list is too small.  I filled up my entire list during the great "casino" spamfest of 2006.  And during many other similar mass hysterias.  Also, idiocy. 


HAVE A DRINK TO CURE WHAT AILS YA!

Problem with this is that it will probably kill server communities entirely.  Battlegroups already hurt server communities massively.  In that case, the benefits probably outweighed the downside, but I feel like the cost on this one is higher than the benefit.

Server communities were ruined years ago. People server hop without a second thought as to what's going on, then come back a few months/ years later.  I've lost track of how many people I've lost contact with due to transfers.

I don't see anyone besides the lone "DK DPS LFG!!!" actually using this shit.

It might light up the lower level instances again. I hear they're all but dead now.

The old instances are, in fact, very dead.

Think of it this way... those hard to reach instances will now be easily reachable.  You may even be able to keep it same server by pre-forming your group, or getting four of you together and grouping the fifth.

The number of people on my server I'd actually go out of my way to group with is surprisingly low.

Really?

What about Ninjas? What about leeching? What about leader abuses (you cleared trash, but my buddy gets to come in for the final boss kill)?

You simply cannot blacklist all retards accross all servers, at least on your own server you can guess based on guilds they belong to...

1. Happen on my server, frequently.  Seriously, check your realm forum.
2. This is new.
3. Also new.

Chances are the same people who would fuck you over on purpose are the same ones clearing Naxx on a regular basis for alts and either don't want to put up with your shit, or are just going to ignore you when you demand your iLevel 219 axe that you and 15 of their guys worked so hard to get for their raid leader's alt.  Any time you see five people in the same guild together with one of them having lead somebody's getting fucked, period.

EDIT: I just realized, you could use the LFG tool to start a raid on one server and, presumably, invite specific people from another server.  That's fucking hardcore.  Expect to see a lot of people going cross-server to raid with friends / like-minded poopsockers met through the forums.

EDIT2: I even have a theme song for this phenomenon. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svR3iXKTJvc)

um...people already do that, it's called server transfers.

If your server is big you don't need this. If your server sucks, the benefits outweigh the possible badness since hey, at least you got a group at all.

No real downside here.

Which still doesn't help you if you have friends on several different servers.

I think I'm going to have to try at some point to create a 25 server raid.  Maybe even make it all paladins and kill new Onyxia, for the lulz.

I wonder if they're going to block trades in these cross-server groups.  Otherwise the next step is cross-server Auction Houses.

It's an interesting step, and I think this will be great for getting pugs for those less frequently visited dungeons.  I'm just trying to see where this rabbit hole goes because it seems like a step rather than a stopping point.

One server, with instances.  Play with any of your ten million friends whenever you want.

The statement was 5 mans only right now, and see how it plays out. I don't see an issue with letting the hardest of the hardcore cross server raid, though. I highly doubt it will happen, really. Just because you wouldn't gain guild XP doing so, and that's pretty much the reward for NOT using the LFG tool.

Regardless of how big your server there is only limited number of times you can abuse PUG and get away with it. Eventually your rep catches up to you and you have to transfer out. My guess is that number of times you can abuse and still have people joining your PUGs is in a single digits. If you happen to be in a guild - your entire guild recruitment dies, and even jackass guilds get serious pressure to get rid of bad apples.

The same is not true for cross-server. This system will have more griefers than Crossroads after school is out.

People rolling Need on everything, then later trading items to buddies (thanks to new 1 hour trade rule)? People running heroics up to the last boss then kicking out everyone to bring in buddies? People leaving after getting drop they wanted, not caring to finish instance? People goting AFK/GTG because, who cares its just a PUG?

This system is doomed to fail without some form of "rate your group members" feature.

You can only trade items for one hour with people who were in your group at the time the item dropped. Also, my point earlier is that the hardest of the hardcore already ignore servers, they find guild and then transfer all the time.  It's fairly common practice for hardcore guilds to get server transfers all the time now so even if they did allow cross-server raid groups there would be no point except for pugs and the only thing you can pug raid is naxx atm.

There is no way anyone would abuse such a system.  :oh_i_see:

Our server has Uld-25 PUGs going on every week or so.  Last weekend we got all the way to Kologarn which was pretty impressive for a bunch of alts and new people.

Haha, no, you can easily pull it off several dozens of times, and even when you do get blacklisted, a name change is cheaper than a transfer.

There's a guy on my server that's cleaned out several guild banks with the same character. Servers as a whole can be rather large and /trade + server forum spam only covers so much.

If our guild actually recruited people, we'd probably get stung by out complete lack of communication with our realm as a whole. I don't think any of us hang out in any global or regional channels to find out who should be blacklisted.

But really, the cross server queues are good for instances it's hard to find groups for/leveling, and has a reward tied to the leaders of it as a bonus, since the changes for guild xp/leveling will make pugs DIE without some system added to encourage them.

Sorry, can't easily find it, where'd they say this feature is coming?

And for how long have they had freakin' banner ads in their forums? Tells ya how long it's been since I've visited that retched place.

On the other hand it would allow said guilds to try out applicants much much more easily, and people to apply to them much more easily and show their skills or lack thereof.  So in a way it might make it easier for people to find a guild they belong in.

Was announced during the dungeons and raids panel if I remember right.

Announced at Blizzcon.

And about a year?

Cross-server instances?  This sounds great.  But there must be a catch somewhere...

(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/1475/htoceveryday.th.png) (http://img268.imageshack.us/i/htoceveryday.png/)

Oh there it is.  Real screenshot from my servers h-toc queue just now.

I like the idea, as it's a royal pain in the ass finding groups for anything other than heroics on the two servers I play on.  Especially difficult to get groups for TBC dungeons.  That said, it's gonna be a complete mess with all the abusing that goes on.  Then again, they could have some rules in mind to keep it to a minimum.  Who knows.  I just need to find a guild that likes running old dungeons as well as the new ones, I guess.

That's what my current H-ToC LFG list looks like as well.

My lock still gets invites within 5 minutes of entering said queue, though.

ToC isn't being targeted by this. Everything that isn't ToC (and thus rarely run, since the loot is so much worse) is the target.

Yep it'll just be even more dps overload with nobody actually doing a job.

That's what everyone's HTOC queue looks like.  Folks looking to gear-up alts with the purple rain.  It's made it easy to get groups for my alt priest though.  Leveling up the pally tank now, should be fun.

You have people using the LFG system on your servers? Must be nice.

All the time.. along with /trade and zone spam

There's a reason I'm a Prot/Holy Paladin.  I'm always in demand.  In some fashion.

Except for that 10-man this weekend.  They needed a Ret Pally.

I tried making an enhance shaman and finding groups once i hit 80 last week. I couldn't find shit, even with everyone doing the loot pinata toc.  So, I switched to resto, did the normal version a few times and within a week i had a full set of epic healing and enhance gear from there and naxx10 pugs/conquest tokens.

This was my experience with my resto shaman.  I rolled a shaman to heal and just made a point of picking up all the offspec loot I could.  Now my enhancement set is probably as good as my resto set, if not better.  The endless scourge of death knights, retadins, and shitty DPS warriors has its benefits for non-plate classes.

Not my experience with enhance. I put up a LFG flag, and I'm finding I have to /tell people, "Whomever gets me an invite first." I think it's mostly because of tremor and cleansing totems, but I don't lack for ToC groups. At all. Of course, I didn't just hit 80 as enhance. Still, I feel appreciated, which is more than I can say for most TBC content.

Now, good ToC groups are another matter. Tank (hah!) DKs are very close to getting on my NFE list. DW tank DKs are already there. Lack of threat, wet paper bag syndrome, out and out stupidity...I could go on.  If I don't know you and you're a DK attempting to tank, I'm gone. Too many excrutiatingly bad experiences with these morons lately.

Curiously enough, most of my terrible ToC experiences come from having shaman healers.

Lack of threat? lol. If 4.5k tps in a 5man isn't enough, you're doing it wrong. But yes, DW tanks should gtfo. As should unholy tanks. And most blood tanks.

The DK at the top is called Hlem. Any relation to our Helm who plays as Hlem from time to time?

Fake edit: Armory search says The Venture Company, so probably.

Alot of it has to do with your gear.  If you are pulling a 2400 gear score in wow-heroes or the armory has you in all ilvl 219 & 226 gear, people are going to pick you over that fresh 80 with some blues and greens or even that relatively decently geared person with mostly heroics and Naxx-10 gear.  I've found that since I'm done with all of the EoC farming, heroics are pretty easy to get in as a mage.  The last 4 days I've gotten in to a group within 5-10m of putting myself in LFG and usually I'm the 2nd or 3rd one in the party (healer and tank already in), with the occasional person being booted for low gear.  Simple put, they want someone who has obviously done this before and is going to make it go as smoothly as possible.  A well geared DPS contributes to this.  But if you are a healer or tank, your options are MUCH wider, but then you also run the risk of having to deal with considerably more people wanting you in their group.  My druid never has a hard time getting in to runs when I put myself down as healing.

 :ye_gods: Yep. That is me.  :awesome_for_real:

The Horde server I play on is SO shitty, it cannot possibly hurt to have cross server PuGs. <3

Yeah, lack of threat. It's something that's cropping up a lot more than it should. When I get a WF proc and immediately get aggro, the tank isn't getting it done. Period. It's not entirely a DK issue (had a really bad warrior last week), but it's way over-represented there. DW DKs are simply the worst offenders (haven't seen one yet that knew what the fuck he was doing).

I was DW tank specced on my DK for exactly one heroic. It was godawful, and that was with 2 219 tank swords. I'm currently blood-tank, and find myself much more durable than I was as frost. Having a 5k self heal as part of my rotation helps a lot. Unlike most tanks I see, I slot my red gem slots with Str/Sta and my yellows with Hit/Sta or Crit/Sta; missing a set bonus is losing out on part of an item's itemization, and that is stupid IMO. Threat stats are not AS important as tank stats, but not useless to the point where they can be neglected. 34k unbuffed hp is plenty, imo.

I also tried out DW tanking exactly once. I felt fine durability-wise, but my threat was shitty, shitty, shitty. I'm 2h frost tanking now, and my threat still feels lower than it was before the patch, but that could just be me being cranky about frost strike being normal instead of the pure love it once was. I'm considering switching to blood tank for the hell of it (I played around with it before and kinda liked it), but I probably won't.

I've tanked some with my druid lately. He's overpowered as fuck.  :heart:

Had the same issue with a DW DK tank in ToC just yesterday. As a rogue, I was Tricks-of-the-Trading him every time it was off CD, using Feint, and I was still pulling threat from him within two seconds of Tricks ending. A bit of that was gear disparity, a bit of it was his inability to tank, but some of it was just plain inadequate threat generation for the class to be tanking.

The big problem with DW tanking is they didn't add Rune Strike to ToT.  I think the theory was that you'd be able to get them off much faster anyway, but you simply don't have enough runic power to do that.  If they didn't want to add Rune Strike double hits to ToT, they should have at least added a discount on the runic power cost of using it.

I haven't had too much trouble tanking as 2h Frost, but then they haven't let me I haven't tanked anything tougher than Nax yet.  Plus I'm using a dps sigil even when tanking.

You mean the sigil of the vengeful heart? That thing is perfect for both blood and frost dk's.

Actually no, I'm using Sigil of Awareness.  They nerfed the Frost Strike damage bonus on Vengeful Heart.

I don't think it's possible for me to hate pugs more than I already do, but this at least gives me hope of getting into instances I'm unable to get into.  Recently rerolled a DK, and the only instances I've been able to find groups for while leveling are Hellfire, Nexus and UK.  Maybe I'm in a minority, but I like to run instances to see them/experience them, rather than for loot, which is only a secondary goal for me.

Also started playing my priest again, and finding that healing is now fun.  My warlock respecced destro (fun and powerful).  My frost mage is in Outlands (fun).  Everything is fun but my hunter, sadly.  It seems Blizzard still has no clue what to do with hunters.

Going from mana usage to focus seems to indicate a pretty major overhaul for Hunters.

I love my hunter, I'm just one of the Tanks with a Capital T in our guild, so I very rarely get to play her in a guild-run raid.

Hunters are currently:

- in the top 4 DPS on every Trial of the Crusader boss fight so far, and #1 on one of them
- on two of the eight world's best arena teams that played at Blizzcon
- incredibly powerful and easy to play in solo PVE/leveling situations

I'm not sure I'm getting what the problem is. Yeah, they lose a lot to DKs in battlegrounds.

Healing is indeed fun now. They even gave paladins a HoT!  :awesome_for_real: *runs from sjofn*

SJOFN SMASH PRIEST

They gave paladins TWO HoTs!

Too bad the one (2T8) is utter garbage, and the other is eh until you get 4T9... after which you have the great choice of being a tier behind in order to make a gimmick HoT on one player (or more if you have smart paladins) almost worthwhile.

/grumble

That's the same ugly choice prot warriors and resto druids with 4 pc T8 have to make, etc.

Why in hell are DKs even trying to 2h tank?  1h tanking works for pallys and warriors because of their other threat tools, like Shield Slam, Devastate, and RF.  You've got rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle for a reason.. you're supposed to be 2h tanking!   Your damage dealt is your threat.

Because you can I think is the main answer. People do a lot of odd things, like playing darkness bonedancers in DAOC or melee blasters in CoH or melee hunters in WoW, just to prove it can be done.

Which is fine until you get into situations where the group wouldn't have wiped or something similar if you were on a "proper" spec. At that point I think the fact that it might be costing other people repair bills or time or whatever makes the choice a little iffy, but it all depends on how the people you're playing with feel about it.

FIFY.

Whoops, yeah, thanks.

I tried it because they had put the DW talents into my tank tree of choice and I wanted to see if it could work. I tried it in Naxx instead of Ulduar for a reason. :P

Plus my human lady looks like she's churning butter when she uses a 2h weapon, QQ.

DW DKs have some PvP utility, but--allegedly, since I haven't tried it myself--it requires good gear to make it effective.

As for tanking, well, there are certain types of players that just have to be a special snowflake and this is the DK version of that. They also tend to be undergeared, which makes it that much worse.

All PuG DKs are on my NFE list as of this last night. Yet another frost DK that couldn't even begin to hold aggro, yet wants 3k+ unbuffed dps for HToC. Poor situational awareness and lost aggro on every fight within 30 sec. Fuck a bunch of DKs.

My guild leader is a DK tank.  He does very well and we never have issues.  Albeit, he is probably one of the only ones I've ever run with that I can AoE a room and he holds aggro on them all.

It does seems like every single DK in a PUG is just flat out bad though...

As Sjofn said, they added DW talents to the Frost tree so it made sense to try them out for tanking and see if they would work.  From a defense standpoint it was ok.  You lose the Stoneskin enchant but you theoretically make up for that by being able to use two tank 1h weapons which give you defense stats.  No 2h weapon gives direct defense stats, which is why they added Stoneskin in the first place.  

The problem, aside from the Rune Stike issues I already mentioned, is that the 1h tank weapons are all fast weapons and DK DW sucks with fast weapons.  You want to use the slowest weapons possible when DWing with a DK.  So that's why I switched back to 2h Frost for tanking but I'm quite happy with DW Frost for DPS.


I've seen tanks of all types have issues with aggro in HToC, specifically on the transition from mounted to ground fighting in the first encounter and in the second phase of Black Knight when he summons all the ghouls.  It's also hell on some otherwise good healers, especially Paladin healers.

If you're pugging, there's no reason to risk a wipe by trying to survive the transition from jousting to melee, just zone out and check your party to make sure that the dumb fuckers remembered to equip their weapon. Also remember to inspect the damn druid.

Most DK tanks seem to forget that spreading diseases + Blood Boil is awesome for aoe threat.

It always annoys me when people run out; I honestly wouldn't mind if Blizzard fixed that. You only need to run out if you are terrible.

That's what I do.  Deathchilled glyphed Howling Blast, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Blood Boil and if it's really necessary, Empowered Rune Weapon to refresh my runes and drop a Death & Decay.  I've also found that Army of the Dead on Black Knight phase 2 is helpful for keeping the ghouls from jumping on the healer right away.

The whole jousting/transition thing is clownshoes. We routinely zone out; even PuGs seem to grasp this. Just a bad design decision. A pox on jousting of any sort.

The main issue I've been having with DKs in PuG is they can't hold aggro. I can go and strictly auto-attack and I"m getting aggro on WFs. There is no excuse for this. My own guild DKs (and, yes, our GL is a DK tank as well) are actually quite good. I don't have to worry about these guys. PuGs, however, are horrific with DKs. Interestingly enough, even in PuGs I'm not seeing this issue with paladins or druids, and only once with a warrior (and they have my pity on transiitions). I blame it on a FotM class that just attracts the worst element in WoW; the worst of the worst simply have to DW for some reason.

 

Or if you don't like to leave things to chance. But hey, you're welcome to be an idiot about it. God forbid that you have to take the 10 seconds to run out and facilitate tank pickup.

Eh, feel more comfortable popping hungering cold and using the extra glyph slot for rune/frost/obli. YMMV. Been using EJ's cookie cutter (http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0055320000000000000000000000305050003520330023012031013510050000000000000000000000000000&glyph=201318000000&version=10192) build.

I didn't take Hungering Cold on my tank spec.  It costs 40 runic power to use unless it's glyphed, which means it might not always be available at the start of a fight.  Trading a Howling Blast glyph for a Hungering Cold glyph doesn't net me anything and not taking Hungering Cold at all saves me a talent point.

What hungering cold glyph? You're trading a HB glyph for an obli/frost strike/rune strike glyph. The 40 rp comes from pulling with HB (15) and dropping DnD (20), then just hitting BS once. You'll keep AoE threat just fine and improve your single target threat a tad. Won't even need the BS if you've horned just before the pull.

My main problem with this is DPS classes don't seem to realise that takes a few GCDs to do.


EDIT: The reason you're not seeing threat problems with PUG druids is even if your DPS is super quick on the trigger, you can lolswipe to victory, which requires no ramp up time or rune management. Paladins generate the highest threat of the four tanks. Warriors, if nothing else, have an AE taunt that DKs do not have. It's not all "these people are terrible," although if a DK gets to do their opening threat shit without jumpy DPSers, there's no real reason to lose aggro.

There is wiiiiiiide variation in the threat output of PuG tanks.  I haven't really figured out why yet, but I've been on the PuG parade for a week or so with my fury warrior, and man, there is no pattern or sense to it all.  There's paladin tanks out there with all epics and 30k health who can't hold threat from autoattacks.  How do you even DO that?

I never really noticed on the rogue with tricks of the trade and all, but when you start out with a whirlwind and cleave combo, you find out quick who uses all their abilities, I tell you what.  Lately it's been about 30% no problem whatsoever, 30% I gotta pay attention and lay off a bit, and 40% jesus dude what are you doing I hope the healer is cool with this.

Been putting together a tank suit so I can be the one to blame.  :drill:

Except I don't even need to drop D&D all the time.  In my case I'd be trading in the HB glyph for a Rune Strike glyph.  Holding aggro on single targets hasn't been an issue so RS glyph hasn't been necessary.  Being able to keep Frost Fever on all the mobs through Rime procs has worked out nicely.

A Deathchilled Howling Blast that also adds a disease gets me more instant aggro than a plain HB which gives me slightly more time to get the Pestilence/Blood Boil combo off so the DPS don't kill themselves and blame the tank.

Who drops DnD all the time?

Keeping frost fever on all targets through rime is a moot point, since you'll be using pest to spread the plague strike disease anyway.This is a case where both approaches work, but mine is still better than yours JUST CUZ!

That's odd, thought everyone's main problem would be people single target dps'ing  some mob other than the one the tank's focused on. It's the one damn thing that always annoys me.

That is why I mark even the crappy trash usually, at least with a skull on one mob so people know HEY ATTACK THIS ONE FIRST DUMBASS. I keybound it, so it basically takes no effort.

Yeah, I was thinking pretty much only of AEers on the AE-fests. Single targets I don't have a problem like 98% of the time.

But if you don't DnD all the time, you won't get your Hungering Cold off!  That was my whole original point!

Besides, if you really wanted to be the tip top bleeding edge DK Tank you would be specced into Blood.  :raspberry:

I don't have bleeding edge gear to spec blood. Woe is me. Seriously, I'm using shoulders with +shieldblock, that shit be sad. Also, their AoE threat is nowhere near as good as frost.
DnD needs to be dropped on a 3+ mob pull, and that's it. On pull =/= all the time. Even in those 3 groups of 3 mobs, it tends to refresh soon enough for me to chain pull them, and if it hasn't, odds are I'll have 40 RP stored, so, meh, whereas your HB glyph will be worthless, WORTHLESS against  single targets.
Revel in my +10% crit awesomeness.  :hulk_rock:

It's not worthless on singles because every time Rime procs I don't have to use a frost rune on Icy Touch to refresh Frost Fever.  :grin:

If you were worried about that, you'd be better served by a glyph of disease.  :grin:

W.R.T.LESS.

Been giving some thought to that, actually. Using a single blood rune to keep diseases on the target, taking advantage of the buffs if you placed them at the right time, and leaving more frost+unholy runes to oblit.

But I don't have to worry about that because Glyph of HB already has it covered for me!

'round and 'round and 'round we go!  :thumbs_up:


You'd definitely be better served with Glyph of Disease over Glyph of Rune Strike, imo.  I've considered it myself since Glyph of Disease is a really nice glyph.  The only reason I haven't switched is inertia because what I have now is already working well for me.

I dislike frost tanking and just go with Blood.  I was Unholy tanking heroics when UB was an aoe and had so few aggro problems it was silly. (Pick up Blade Barrier and Toughness along with Anticipation. Whee, mitigation.)   I drop D&D at the beginning, spam my diseases, then drop a pestilance/ Bloodrune refresh/ Blood Plague to build aggro.  After that it's a cakewalk.

Again, I only tank heroics and the random elite mob I can't DPS down on my own.  I have no idea how viable this is raid tanking, as I really don't want to bother with it.

The DW talents were added to shush up the DW DPS whiners who complained about frost's lack of performance.  I don't think Blizz even imagined folks would try tanking with them, but given the groupthink that "TANK=FROST" they really should have.

Hell, I'm willing to bet that's how they're going to fix their "Mastery Stat" conundrum.*  They'll just go full-out and make Frost the Protection tree of DKs, and tell us all to QQ about the changes and deal with the new reality.  You want to DPS, go Unholy or Blood, you want to tank go Frost.

*(See the explanation of how Mastery works in the Cataclysm thread if you don't understand the problem)

So if they go with that frost change, you'll essentially be warriors. That begs the question, why even have warriors if DKs can be more effective tanks and already do better dps. Oh and they wear the same gear.

It's getting a little silly. I'd happily take a DK upgrade to my warrior if I got to keep my gear.

You've got block... and stuns.  And.. um..

Block. .. oh and 2 "get back in range quick" skills.

But mostly shield and block.

Oh for fuck's sake, if DKs get a tank tree all its own and two DPS trees, that does not turn them into freaking warriors. I am sick to fucking death of warriors bawling about how they're sooooo uuuuuuuseless now. The gap between tanks for the VAST MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE (those that casually raid or less) is very small. I can't be sad for warriors that in Hard Modes they're not the Default Tank anymore when they spent the entire life of the game prior to that being the Default Tank for Practically Everything.

I am pretty much assuming that they will make frost the Tank Tree since that's our Tank Presence. If they find a different way, cool, but that seems like the obvious solution to me. Would probably make balancing DKs a fuckton easier too. :P

You tank all the time Sjofn, as you've said. You've also said you have all the tanking classes I believe.

Let me venture to guess that you tank mostly with your pally or DK?

I don't really understand why warriors feel threatened by DK tanks anymore. Yes, at release, their cooldowns and HP/armor scaling were stupidly overpowered. They're not any more, and I'd happily put my tanking ability up against any similarly geared DK.


Also silences, better raid protection skills in intervene and vigilance, a couple buffs and several debuffs that DK's don't offer, etc.

Because warriors are unfun as shit to play.  I forced myself to level one to 60 years ago pre-BC when my guild needed an instance tank.  It's sat there ever since because they're just UN FUN.  Pally tank? Fun.  Druid tank? Fun.  DK Tank?  Fun.  Warrior? OMGWTFGODDAMNRAGE.   Being "the" tank was the bone they were thrown for suffering through the shit that is being a warrior.

If you haven't played it since vanilla/60, you should try it again. It is a lot more interesting than it was back then. Basically the only dumb thing left is heroic strike spam.

It's still really not that fun. Shockwave was good, but it's on a 20s cooldown. The rest of the stuff is just shield slam cooldowns and thunderclaps with heroic strike spam. The evolution has made your TPS go up from being horribly annoying as it was back in the day, but not many of the basics have changed in the last two years.

Honest question: why do you still play this game? From your posts here you really seem to hate it.

Oh I don't tank anymore. I switched to DPS about a year ago. Life is much simpler on this side as a warrior, and I have more utility in arms spec. At times, I'm forced to tank 5 mans due to lack of actual tanks, but that's about it.

I've run to hellfire a few times, taken some swipes at hellboars and wound-up dead before hearthing back to IF and my bank-alt duties.  Since I was a prot tank, all my gear was aimed at that.  I went back a week or so ago and did notice that prot is able to kill things now.. but found I really didn't want to do Hellfire a 6th time.    (I'm haivng a hard enough time getting the gumption to do  Northrend a 3rd.    :| )  The class just wasn't exciting and different enough from what I remember to make me go, "Yeah, NOW we're talking."   I just still found it generally unfun.

Maybe heirloom items would change my mind.. but I'm enjoying buying them for my rogue and noob hunter (2nd one, too) more.


And of course you and Pae posted since I started, so now I have to edit and quote.

Her Druid as of late.  :grin:

My warrior is merely level 75, but I'm leveling her as protection. While I do find her more whack-a-mole-esque than the other three, it's mostly "feels different" to me than anything else. I won't be able to make the Final Call until I'm level 80 of course, but I would say paladin tank was the least fun (especially if I was trying to solo one up these days from level 1). Yes, it's entertaining to kill 10 dudes at once for a while, but it's not really "fun." At least not for me.

HOWEVER, I can understand the "it just isn't as fun waaah" complaints, because that's a matter of taste. WE'RE USELESS WHIIIIIIIIINGE, on the other hand, can fuck off and die.

And in case you were wondering, I didn't level my warrior tank earlier because we already have two warriors that MT for us, and diversity of tanks seemed like it would be better than having a lot of duplicates. It wasn't a bad assumption to make as it turns out.

And yeah, I've tanked more as my druid lately. Although I've done a lot of healing with him too! Druids are rad. I shoulda leveled him first.  :why_so_serious:

Both you and Ingmar let TEAM DRUID down :(

We seriously did. But we are both 80 now! TEAM DRUID CAN RIDE AGAIN.

Back to the whole cross-server LFG & instance groups, I am totally in favour of this.

Trying to get groups for anything except heroics and 10-mans on my server is a total nightmare, let alone anything outside of Northrend. If this happens and it works then it might make some of that easier for people who aren't in a big guild and/or are on a low-pop faction.

However, after 5 years Blizzard still haven't made a decent LFG tool so I don't doubt that they'll fuck this up somehow too  :oh_i_see:

It covers all the basics now. What else should it do to be "decent"?

So, where does someone find a guild these days ?

I have been playing on and off since release but never really tried the alliance side and now I want to give it a look before the cataclysm.

LFG across servers will make little to no difference, because there are never enough tanks and healers to go around.

For starters it shouldn't have any restrictions on what dungeons you can flag yourself as LFG for. I've still got DTK, AN, etc quests on my 80s but I can't flag myself LFG for them? Stupid.

DoaC was launched, what, 4 years before WoW and it had a far superior LFG tool.

You can complete those quests on Heroic difficulty.

What else?

You could join us on Doomhammer, although if you're not a big fan of soloing, you might get lonely in our guild. We're (mostly) pretty mellow at least? I think? Maybe you should ask Lantyssa.

I will preface this post by saying that I played a warrior to 60 in beta, got a warrior to 60 in retail, then got ANOTHER warrior to 80 now, and it's my main. Needless to say, I've played the warrior a LOT - tank, dps, pvp, whatever.

Tanking with the warrior is NOT FUN. I avoid it if I can get away with it. I have a druid at 80, and that character is a lot more fun to tank with in every way. They really just need to redesign warrior tanking from scratch, but they'll never do that. At least block is being changed to a flat % now, and all tanks are getting a Survival of the Fittest type talent. Maybe that will help.

Obviously it is a brain chemistry thing. I  :heart: tanking with my warrior, with the exception of the HS spam issue.

I've tanked with both a DK and a Druid and I found bear tanking to be deadly boring.  Powerful, but dull.  At least compared to the DK.  Which is funny because Druid cat is one of the most complex dps characters and is far, far from dull.

It's lonely.  Pretty mellow.  I'm still a spaz who rambles on in gchat.

I know almost nothing about their raiding.  The most I've done is a few lower level instances with a tiny subset of the guild.  (Partly due to level differences, partly due to my own social anxiety.)

Ah, Doomhammer.  See I asked what server people were on and no one said anything.   :sad_panda:

Mountain Time and it's PVE.  Excellent.  No jackholes killing you in the middle of an escort quest.

Horde or Alliance?

I am going to say Doomhammer as well.  Not that I have ever played WoW, it's just sounds like the server I'd play on if I did.

Alliance, guild's Slap in the Face. Tabard's a crying bear.

Also, no one answered because you're black, obv.

On the bright side, my African-American genetics give me a long stride and powerful endurance, ensuring that no matter where you hide, I shall find you.

Alliance, hrmm.  Guess I may try a Draenei as I prefer Paladin, and refuse to play human again.

There's Dwarf pallies too.  Best Alliance race.

Since the thread has gone in this direction I should probably put out some caveats before people decide to go crazy and reroll or transfer or whatever. For some of you there would probably be some culture shock involved just because we're probably much more PC than most (if 'fags' or 'gay' are part of your normal vocabulary you should probably not bother, for example, same with racist/sexist BS, etc., we are a pretty diverse group and I won't put up stuff that might make people feel attacked or uncomfortable, swearing is fine though  :awesome_for_real:), we tend as a group to be pretty liberal politically which is a problem for some, we don't PVP much as a group (although if someone wants to organize that sort of thing they're more than welcome to) and we have a very, um, WIDE range of skill levels (if WoW had an "Awful Fittings" thread you could find plenty of them in our guild). If you're interested in any kind of speedy cutting edge progression we're probably not an excellent choice. We tend to play 'late' by US player standards; the peak hours for the guild are around 7-10 pm Pacific.

I'd hate for someone to spend a bunch of money on a transfer and then find out that we're not a good match, and I'd also hate for any kind of didn't-get-along-with-our-guild kind of drama to spill back over to here.

Also I'd like to remind people that are already *in* the guild to please try to avoid turning this forum into Inside Joke Land since there are plenty of other readers here and it just wastes their time.  :oh_i_see:

All that said, this is the guild: http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Doomhammer&gn=Slap+in+the+Face

Thorgrim is me and if you end up on Doomhammer and want to give it a try send me a tell.

EDIT: Also we don't currently raid 25s, only 10s, if that is important to you.

I dream of the day when the female dwarves and orcs will rebel, creating their own faction. It'll be glorious.

But yes, dwarves = best alliance race.

Whatever, you're not the boss of me!


Also, Tazelbain, we did pretty much pick Doomhammer because the name is rad.

He's pretty much taunting us into turning this into inside joke land.

Mmmmmaybe I'll make a character on Doomhammer so I can hang out during off hours.

A DWARF FEMALE, PERCHANCE?

I'll try to follow any newcomers to DH, created a shammy a few hours ago, will see how it goes.

Oh so tempting.  I like that fag isn't allowed in guild chat as I lost that lobby with my current guild ;-)

But... Alliance =P  I haven't ever made it very far as one of them and don't know how much fun it would be (obviously lots from the many people who play Alliance ;-) ).

I have created Safehammer of Doomhammer!  Since all my normal names were gone.  It'll be a nice off-character to play and relax.

Has it changed since February? Because even that recently, the one EQ1 had in before WoW's launch was better...

What else?
[/quote]

Well I've been thinking about this.

What I'd like is a lot more information. I envisage something split into 2 panels, top panel showing everyone flagged LFG, they're locations, what dungeons/quests they're wanting to group for, their class and level obviously, but a quick way to see talent specs and even gear wouldn't go amiss. Also if you flag yourself LFG you should be able to add a short note of some kind saying anything you want.

Bottom panel should be groups - ALL groups looking for more people, no restrictions on what you can see at all. If a level 20 wants to ask if they can join a Scarlet Monastery group then fine. Again the more info the better - group member classes, specs, locations - so you can see if they're already in the instance or scattered to the four winds, whatever.

Make this LFG window big if needed. Achievements and AH windows are large enough, that kinda size if needed. Test the damn thing. You know, proper interface design type testing, see if it works before chucking it out there.

I think LFG systems are kinda important and they should always act to facilitate grouping of any kind, never impede it.

It changed in April. It's better now, not great but I feel it rises to the level of decent.

You can add a comment. It's the Comment button at the bottom. They could stand to be a bit longer but it's enough to get the point across. They show up when you hover over someone's name in the LFG/LFM list.

Seeing all groups at once sounds like clutter. If my 80 is LFG/LFM I don't need to see what all the L1 to L74s are up to. What I don't like is that I can't select a low level instance at all from the drop down menu. It would be nice to be able to see if anyone is LFG for a low level instance that I'm running a friend through with my L80.

The main thing that annoys me is the inability to toggle the LFG channel on and off without joining the LFG tool. hence I spend a fair amount of time LFG for wintergrasp or the storm peaks.

Interesting update (http://tinyurl.com/2pzegg)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/always-lfg.aspx

There's an ugly pug licking my computer!  :oh_i_see:

The restrictions on LFG are my biggest beef with it now.  You know, not being able to LFG or see who's LFG for places outside whatever they deem your level range to be.  Even dungeons that you're not capable of even zoning into should be allowed on LFG, that way you can be playing an alt and set yourself LFG for something, with a comment to the effect of 'level 80 X; playing an alt' to clarify.