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Topic: Lack of tanks (Read 117180 times)
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Lt.Dan
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Posts: 758
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I think tanking is pretty fun as long as your groupmates aren't utterly incompetent, and it's miserable if they aren't because in the end you get blamed for not holding aggro.
That. Same is true of priests too. Getting blamed for not healing sucks - especially when it's a DPS class overnuking or a Fury warrior not picking up untagged mobs.
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Typhon
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Posts: 2493
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[...]your physical types generally placed themselves between the squishies and the bad guys[...] I cannot wait until an mmo developer replaces the half-assed taunt/aggro mechanic with formations, positioning and collision. Something that runs past you to get to the squishy behind you should seriously leave themselves open to getting fucked from behind. NPC AI should be very cautious about letting something get behind them, and very aggressive about taking advantage of someone showing their back
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jpark
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1538
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[...]your physical types generally placed themselves between the squishies and the bad guys[...] I cannot wait until an mmo developer replaces the half-assed taunt/aggro mechanic with formations, positioning and collision. Something that runs past you to get to the squishy behind you should seriously leave themselves open to getting fucked from behind. NPC AI should be very cautious about letting something get behind them, and very aggressive about taking advantage of someone showing their back Interesting. It vaguely reminds me of an ability tanks had in Shadowbane during pvp - "hold the line" - where they could create a "barrier" between themselves and some object if I recall, forcing melees from having immediate access to the casters in the group.
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"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation. " HaemishM.
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ShenMolo
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Posts: 480
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I'm trying to think back 17 years to my D & D days...the Warriors didn't "tank" mobs did they? Maybe in a single mob encounter, yes, but for multiple mobs, I remember everyone had to fend for themselves no matter what class.
They pretty much did, depending on the GM -- your physical types generally placed themselves between the squishies and the bad guys, or used RP mechanics (taunting my calling the goblins mother's bad names, for instance), or simply bum rushed them and the GM decided "Angry huge guy with sword in my face wins out on Bad Guy's 'Who the hell should I wallop' list over 'Weird Looking dude in a robe over there'". Later on, as you party gained reputation, things changed. Your bad guys tended to learn what the wizard looked like, and that he liked to throw fireballs (so if they couldn't get to him, they stayed close to his buddies to deny him a clean shot). After awhile, the bad guys tended to equip Anti-Biggest-Threat devices. (Did you know shatter spells can seriously fuck over ANYONE who likes to keep his poisons and alchemist's fire in class jars ON his person? Wands and scrolls of shatter are quite cheap). At least in my games, multiple mobs tended to try to grab who was nearest or who seemed the biggest target -- but my fighter types were clever about keeping themselves in the way, and taking feats and skills that allowed them to shape the battlefield. Now I remember. We used miniatures and a big sheet of plastic with a square grid on it. We drew out the dungeon as we explored it, and used miniatures to position ourselves in the fights. The physical classes would position themselves between the mobs and the squishies, and unless the encounter called for mobs comming from multiple directions the DM usually kept the mobs on the tank(s).
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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If you do not believe that tanking should be an interactive and engaging role, then what exactly do you want it to be? Sunder twice and go grab a cup of coffee?
To apply the same analogy when you play TF2, do you want to be able to shoot your gun twice and watch as everyone around you magically falls dead?
Seriously, you've stopped tanking because it is too difficult? What about it is more difficult than previously? Please do elaborate. Maybe there's something I'm not seeing.
I still hold by the statement that while tanking is perhaps more stressful than before, it is not mechanically more difficult.
I'll focus on these questions. To answer what I'm trying to tank these days, I've just started our SSC run after farming Kara, Gruul, and Mags. I have all Kara gear with 3-T4 pieces and the Engineer's Tanking Hat. I'm only missing the Breastplate for T4. I don't think Warrior tanking should be 2 shots and kick back. I do think there is a better balance between being constantly stressed out on simple pulls due to threat not shooting up. Is that a DPS problem? Sure, to a degree. To another degree, there's a lot of frustration when mobs or bosses do a ton of dodge/parry/whatever on your hits. Tanking gear doesn't have a lot of +hit on it, and I think it should. I haven't stopped tanking myself, as I enjoy the leadership and the challenge. I have watched about half the warriors I tanked with in BWL quit, however. They all went to arenas or solo and never looked back. They simply got tired of dealing with the stress. Life on the DPS side is much easier and incredibly more rewarding in the solo, pvp, and even raid realms if you can get in. Prot warriors only get one choice on where to be effective. These were the same tanks who helped me farm BWL. Only one of them was a bad technical tank, so I'm not sorry he rerolled a shaman. The rest were solid players. I think you are confusing technical difficulty with stress. I also think it speaks volumes that you admit we're not putting out any more threat than we used to before TBC. Does this not seem insane to you? It completely makes people want to just shrug and say fuck it. It also creates a huge barrier to entry for new tanks. Not to mention most of the stupid designs that Blizzard made with certain bosses being blatant DPS races, and you get a maximum of stress on people. People don't want stress in a game. They don't want to walk away from the stresses of their job or kids or girlfriend or general life only to log into a game to get stressed out on your free time. That last point is where I think the 1% get lost. Those people don't have a ton of stuff going on stressing them out in their life, so they don't have to worry about stress in the game. I'll take a bit of a shot in the dark as to what kind of person you are, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, which will sort of benchmark your life stresses. My guess is that you are probably in your late teens-early 20s. You are unmarried, in school, have no job or a very flexible 40 hours or less job. You don't go out much during the evenings and your life isn't very scheduled outside of the game. You probably raid 5 days a week minimum, and it's probably for about 4 hours a session or more. Where am I on that? Now, I know there is a tendency here to tell everyone you're a raiding fiend and fucking models, but if you lie to us, we'll know. EDIT: Oh and I forgot one. You probably don't travel much. Sorry for the late reply, I had class. I agree with you that it is a stressful job. Every aspect of raiding post TBC has become more stressful. You are correct, in my posts I have commented that tanking is not mechanically more difficult now. I'll agree that the stress may lead to burn out. I appreciate that you've taken the time to respond instead of going TL;DR As for myself I'm a med student in my 20s, work part time in a hospital and go to school full time (I figure you'd gather as much from med student). My girlfriend also plays this game, also raids, and is in my guild. She's the offtank. We currently raid 2 nights at 4 hours, but that's because this (everything) is now farm content. It used to be 4-5 nights, and for most guilds this is actually on the low side. Ironically, I know of a lot of 'casual' guilds who also raid this much but for various reasons (largely commitment) they are bottlenecked on progression. I'd like to see a fix for that, but I don't think that it's coming. Yes it is a large commitment. It also helped relieve the stress of "ZOMG LEARN TEH BONESES" without the nasty aftermath of binge drinking/drug abuse/whatever. I go out more than I used to now, and have since cut back on my WoW because of 1. Going out really is more fun if done responsibly and 2. There isn't much left to do anymore. I might quit altogether soonish but that would be because my significant other is even more bored with the game than I am (I spend more time trolling forums than playing). And I have no idea how people can raid 5 times a week and keep a girlfriend (unless she also does the same). Incidentally, no I do not travel much. I could see how doing that often, whether for work or other reasons would make raiding at this level much harder. Hardcore raiding is not for everyone (read, people with serious commitments likely to arise from being past your 20s), and you should probably consult a doctor before starting (they'll tell you it's highly detrimental to your health and physique). I don't think that the 1% (I actually like this way of putting it) are somehow all maladjusted, socially inept losers, but it does take a commitment (largely of consistent attendance) beyond what is typical. This doesn't make them 'better' at the game (no, I don't think that anyone not at the T6 raiding tier is a scrub) but it does mean that they take it more seriously (perhaps too much so, granted that it is a video game). But if you think of the massive amounts of television the average North American watches a week, I'm certain that you can carve out the 20 hours required to raid. Of course, TV doesn't require you to watch it from 7-11 Monday-Thursday like a religion, but that's another issue.
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
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Ok so that pretty much answered my question that you mostly matched the criteria of what I considered to be the target hardcore raiding demographic. I'm honestly at a loss that if you didn't meet those criteria, if you could ever play this game in such a way. I don't think it's at all possible.
It is good that you are shaving down the game time to do other things. The outside world is in fact more enjoyable and travel is one of my cornerstones of happiness. You will rarely find me in my apartment on the weekends. I'm usually at the lake, golfing, ballgames, or various other party type places. This precluded me from raiding at all on the weekends, so that meant I was never involved in any raiding guilds. However, I did create a raiding alliance with people who also enjoyed their weekends, and we sem-hardcore our way through stuff. It's a nice medium I think.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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I don't raid weekends. Never have, probably never will. Weekends are for doing stuff with people, or if not that, then cramming for anatomy/pathology/some other course with lots of cramming.
You are correct however. It is very difficult to raid without fulfilling a certain set of criteria. The ones you mentioned are pretty much accurate. Flexible schedule, partner willing to either play with you/not see you for large chunks of time, largely predictable life, etc.
Sounds perfect for retirees. How about it. The next target demographic.
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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I just did a Heroic Mech run with 4 supremely epic'd out people (mix of Tier 5/6 level gear) as my warrior in 2 pieces of Kara gear (I cannot buy a fucking tank drop from there) and blues. 4 wipes not counting the 3 the shammy accidentally caused with his totems pulling mobs (guess who hasn't stepped foot inside a 5-man in a while). I just could not keep up with aggro, and these players were actually very very good. They tried their damnest to turn the DPS down so they didn't just blow clean past me in threat, and I know this because they were staying just below aggro gain on my threat meter most of the time, which means they WERE watching (otherwise they'd have simply blown clean past me). I just couldn't keep up, because one gigantic crit from the elemental or enhancement shammy and game over, 2k+ aggro spike right over me and there is no way in hell I'm getting it back unless they simply stop all DPS and let the heroic mob pound them for 3-4 seconds while I desperately tried to shield slam and heroic strike it back.
We completed it and they were all really good sports about it (all four of them said they've had far worse groups with far better geared tanks. I hope they weren't just lying to make me feel better) despite the stupid cloth healer boots dropping (no priest), but man, how is that for scaling? I mean, having kara-class armor wouldn't make me generate any more threat for the most part, so it's down to the weapon...would having a tanking weapon with 10-15 more DPS really make me generate that much more threat?
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Musashi
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Posts: 1692
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It has always literally amazed me that the same people who created a game as awesome as WoW could sleep at night with the sheer fuck that is the Protection line for warriors. It's so fucked that even people who like tanking (like me) don't want to spec in it.
You can argue about tanking mechanics all you want, but they are what they are. I don't know how you could make tanking more fun that it is, really. The problem is that warriors basically give up the rest of the game. There's nothing you can do outside tanking anymore. There were at one time, some very highly respected tanks, in highly respected guilds who were giving feedback to the effect of, 'Protection is fine.' These people should be killed. Protection isn't fine. It wasn't fine. And it won't be fine until they completely unfuck it. I love tanking as much as anyone. It is a lot of responsibility, but if you're okay with that it's fine. It's not tanking that's broken imo. It's the cockblock from experiencing anything but an instance after you spec prot. Threat scaling, I don't know about. I haven't played in months.
At one time, when they were implementing shield slam into the game, they had it on test with attack power as the modifier. I thought to myself, "wow finally! i'll be able to spec prot and do damage with a gear swap." But then they changed it to be modified by shield block value before it went live. Those same respected warriors all cried bloody murder at the thought of collecting another set of gear in order to pvp. (yea, these same guys believed it was fun to pvp as a prot warrior.) Sp essentially it meant that it made no sense for a prot warrior to collect any crit/ap gear since shield block value was the only thing to up their damage, and gear with shield block value has no crit or ap. The only problem with that is normalization or no it's real fucking hard to hit something for 200 with your one hander and get enough rage to do a god damn thing. And when your only source of burst damage takes 4-5 whacks to use, it's pretty obvious at the speed of WoW pvp you're gonna die no matter who you're fighting.
How will they fix it? I don't know, and I don't care. I waited for 3 years for them to fix it, and I gave up waiting.
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AKA Gyoza
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jpark
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Posts: 1538
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I realize I am the odd man out here.
I love protection as a warrior. Also - with the exception of arena - I have had considerable success in pvp as a protection warrior - great fun.
Yup, protection warriors are not damage dealers - but as damage soakers - they can lead the charge, and occupy nodes of strategic value greatly enhancing their threat.
Restating my position earlier - generally guys are not going to play their warrior - unless they know they can raid. And raid tank positions are fewer now thn they were pre-BC.
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"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation. " HaemishM.
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Phred
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Posts: 2025
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We completed it and they were all really good sports about it (all four of them said they've had far worse groups with far better geared tanks. I hope they weren't just lying to make me feel better) despite the stupid cloth healer boots dropping (no priest), but man, how is that for scaling? I mean, having kara-class armor wouldn't make me generate any more threat for the most part, so it's down to the weapon...would having a tanking weapon with 10-15 more DPS really make me generate that much more threat?
Someone posted here recently that taunt was changed to permanently put you at the highest threat + 5 or something in BC. Is that true because it should make keeping up with agro a little easier. If your shaman gets a 2k spike you just taunt and adopt all his agro. Or was the person who posted about the change blowing smoke?
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Ratama
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Posts: 130
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10 sec CD on Warrior Taunt; lot of spike DPS can happen in 10 secs, especially with Shamans.
Anyway; if tanks have to spam taunt at every CD, then something's wrong (and yeah, threat scaling for Prot Warriors is pretty fucking bad atm).
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Spare the rod, spoil the dev.
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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In reply to some stuff. 1. Taunt gives you a threat value equal to the highest threat target currently an forces the mob to attack you for the duration of the debuff (3 seconds). In order to remain primary agro after this time, you need to generate 10% more threat than the previous value. A complete explanation of threat and agro mechanics can be found here: http://www.wowwiki.com/ThreatWith extremely overgeared DPS in 5 mans, taunt can be a lifesaver. However by the T5/T6 gear level, DPS has scaled to the point where they require salvation and full raid buffs on the tank to maintain agro parity. Incidentally, this makes 5 mans somewhat harder at a gear level above that which they are intended for. When I do them, I swap out 11 items for DPS gear, which increases both the damage I take (more rage) and the damage I do (more rage). This is not really an option for people tanking these places at the intended gear level, and with non ideal group compositions (read no paladin), this is a flaw in game mechanics. Then again, they've stopped balancing this game properly for a long time, especially because they're trying to balance both PvP, 5-man PvE and raid level PvE on one ruleset. Recent changes to windfury totem and instant attacks substantially decreased the viability of MS warriors in high end raiding while changing nothing in high end arena - most teams still have a warrior and a shaman, and the warrior still hamstring with a windfury totem up. Not for the proc, but because hamstring is damned useful and heroism is really overpowered in 5v5 arena. Again, I digress. I've realized that Prot is good only for tanking in groups. It is not a solo tree. It is not intended to be a solo tree. It will never be a solo tree. It is awful for PvP. No really. GOD AWFUL (speaking mostly about Arenas, since AV is a PvE battleground, and in WSG, AB and EoTS ranged classes are largely superior to melee anyways). I've come to terms with this because this is true for most classes. Some classes have shitty specs that are only good for raiding. For example, resto druids, resto shaman and holy paladins and priests can not solo any better than I can (as prot). Prot pallies are just as bad in PvP as I am, and PvP specced DPS classes are clearly worse in PvE by a margin of about 30% (largely because PvP specs don't have threat reducing talents, which is pretty much the only factor that limits DPS at this point). This DOES NOT exculpate Blizzard from fixing the "PvE" only specs. I realize that saying, "in order to have fun with your character you need to respec twice a week" is not a valid response. Just because a lot of us do it, does not mean we like it. I think the major problem is their attempt to balance PvE and PvP using the same ruleset. They do this at the same time as they make PvE and PvP more and more distinct (ie. Arenas, which create artificial situations for maximum min/max). I can't say I know how to fix it, but I think WAR (Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning) might be on the right path. If you tie the PvE into the PvP and create different rulesets for both, you might not have this problem of "my tank is useless for anything but tanking". Which is especially painful when the other two tank capable classes have much more utility: feral druids can DPS and tank with the same spec (and solo very well) while prot pallies can at least buff (extremely well) and retain substantial healing capacity (with the right gear and a willingness to use potions). Prot warriors can...
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Glazius
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Posts: 755
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I think tanking is pretty fun as long as your groupmates aren't utterly incompetent, and it's miserable if they aren't because in the end you get blamed for not holding aggro.
That. Okay, lemme float this. In TBC, DPS can gear up for more DPS better than tanks can gear up for more threat. So if DPS and tanks both play exactly the same as they did before, the tank will lose aggro. And the DPS will say, "I haven't changed anything, you just suck!" to the tank, and the tank doesn't know enough about core tanking mechanics and the DPS's build to point the finger where it should be pointed. Hence the perception that tanking gets harder.
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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I think tanking is pretty fun as long as your groupmates aren't utterly incompetent, and it's miserable if they aren't because in the end you get blamed for not holding aggro.
That. Okay, lemme float this. In TBC, DPS can gear up for more DPS better than tanks can gear up for more threat. So if DPS and tanks both play exactly the same as they did before, the tank will lose aggro. And the DPS will say, "I haven't changed anything, you just suck!" to the tank, and the tank doesn't know enough about core tanking mechanics and the DPS's build to point the finger where it should be pointed. Hence the perception that tanking gets harder. This has always been the case. Except now, the rate at which your capacity to outscale tank threat in a non-ideal raid situation increases faster than previously. This is a fundamental problem with how they design the game. They balance it so that when my guild is killing Illidan the fight is not trivial for us. They don't balance it around the fact that when 3 of our DPS go do a pug Heroic mech run they aren't pulling agro with auto attacking. And this is a problem because I'm certain that there are more than 100 times more people killing Pathelon the Calculator than there are killing Illidan Stormrage. Core mechanics based around a situation which does not occur in the most common gameplay method (5 mans) is going to lead to stuff like this.
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Righ
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Posts: 6542
Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.
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I see a lot of people try and become a tank and easily level a warrior to 70, learn the class in prot tanking mode, become very effective then hit the raiding gear wall. Raid composition often denies these aspiring tanks from progressing simply because it is more efficient to poach a prot warrior from another guild than to have one of your existing players gear up. Early level 70 dungeons that are quite limiting on party composition (such as Karazahn, but also some 5 mans) don't make matters easy - especially when the aspiring tank is less geared than the rest of the party. In the raiding guild I was in, I saw a number of people try, get really very good at tanking then fair at the level 70 gear stage. Most are now playing tanking druids that they subsequently leveled, since it was easier to accommodate the druid as a sub-optimal healer and have them collect tanking gear than it was for them to be a sub-optimal DPS warrior collecting prot gear.
So I think that there are many potential warrior tanks out there, but the design of the raiding game is conspiring against them succeeding.
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The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
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Dren
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Posts: 2419
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We completed it and they were all really good sports about it (all four of them said they've had far worse groups with far better geared tanks. I hope they weren't just lying to make me feel better) despite the stupid cloth healer boots dropping (no priest), but man, how is that for scaling? I mean, having kara-class armor wouldn't make me generate any more threat for the most part, so it's down to the weapon...would having a tanking weapon with 10-15 more DPS really make me generate that much more threat?
Someone posted here recently that taunt was changed to permanently put you at the highest threat + 5 or something in BC. Is that true because it should make keeping up with agro a little easier. If your shaman gets a 2k spike you just taunt and adopt all his agro. Or was the person who posted about the change blowing smoke? You have to keep in mind that some MOBs are not tauntable.
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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What was really depressing on that run is that we had a wipe on one of the Arcane Destroyers because I had to choose between interrupting an ability (Charged Fists. Makes it hit for 3+ ADDITIONAL damage for a period of time, the 3k also hits anyone in melee range) and staying ahead in threat. It casts this spell maybe every 2-3 seconds after my shield slam cools down, and it's a QUICK casting spell (1.5 seconds from the looks of it). Thanks to the Global Cooldown I was constantly missing the interrupt and eating huge spike damage because I just couldn't stop my skill rotation lest I lose aggro. The enhancement shammy picked up the slack on the interrupt and it was okay after that, but good god it was frustrating.
What's funny is that the bosses were largely no problem (ignoring the Nethermancer, who changes targets after blasting the primary aggro on the list with a huge slowdown/knockback) due to the super-exxxxxtreme DPS. Pathaleon was a joke compared to the trash waves before him I could just barely control. He died so hard he barely got to summon his adds.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Dren
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Posts: 2419
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What's funny is that the bosses were largely no problem (ignoring the Nethermancer, who changes targets after blasting the primary aggro on the list with a huge slowdown/knockback) due to the super-exxxxxtreme DPS. Pathaleon was a joke compared to the trash waves before him I could just barely control. He died so hard he barely got to summon his adds.
You know, I've noticed this quite a bit in TBC. Many times the trash fights before a boss were WAY harder than the actual boss. Also, mini-bosses before the last boss are often times several kinds of hard while the last big boss is cake. Black Morass and Mana Tombs come to mind right away, but I know there are many more examples.
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Threash
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Posts: 9171
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What's funny is that the bosses were largely no problem (ignoring the Nethermancer, who changes targets after blasting the primary aggro on the list with a huge slowdown/knockback) due to the super-exxxxxtreme DPS. Pathaleon was a joke compared to the trash waves before him I could just barely control. He died so hard he barely got to summon his adds.
You know, I've noticed this quite a bit in TBC. Many times the trash fights before a boss were WAY harder than the actual boss. Also, mini-bosses before the last boss are often times several kinds of hard while the last big boss is cake. Black Morass and Mana Tombs come to mind right away, but I know there are many more examples. Most heroics used to be this way. Some of the trash pulls in heroic SL belonged in mount hyjal.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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What's funny is that the bosses were largely no problem (ignoring the Nethermancer, who changes targets after blasting the primary aggro on the list with a huge slowdown/knockback) due to the super-exxxxxtreme DPS. Pathaleon was a joke compared to the trash waves before him I could just barely control. He died so hard he barely got to summon his adds.
You know, I've noticed this quite a bit in TBC. Many times the trash fights before a boss were WAY harder than the actual boss. Also, mini-bosses before the last boss are often times several kinds of hard while the last big boss is cake. Black Morass and Mana Tombs come to mind right away, but I know there are many more examples. Most heroics used to be this way. Some of the trash pulls in heroic SL belonged in mount hyjal. Trust me, Mt. Hyjal trash is even worse relatively. 8-12 waves of THE MOST ANNOYING TRASH EVER. So much of it and so much to tank. Makes my eyeballs bleed. Then the boss comes and it's a large trash mob that you beat on for loot. That said, heroic SL trash was brutal without a dwarf priest. The fearing fel overseers were extremely difficult back when we needed to do it to get into TK. Random fears and one shotting MS was a little much. My GF and I eventually learned the hidden timer and got pretty good at predicting when they would fear (90% accurate or so), which eventually led to use running the place 5x each to get everyone attuned. The bosses themselves never posed a problem. That's shitty game design. Seriously, this was the one part that I loved about Naxx. Please for the love of god do not put trash in instances where the trash makes your players want to kill themselves. If a game designer is reading this (not bloody likely), learn this. Trash should be short, fun and challenging. Not long, repetitive and extremely likely to turn your 110% performance into a wipe because of a poorly implemented gameplay mechanic (fear).
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Righ
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Posts: 6542
Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.
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110% performance
What you're really saying here is that you don't perform near 100% most of the time and yet you overvalue your mediocrity. :P There should be no trash in a group scenario. Even lesser encounters should offer significant enough rewards to be valued. There should not be any respawns in instanced dungeons either. File these stupid design ideas along side permadeath, corpse runs and xp loss.
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The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
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I don't mind long trash if I have to fight it once. The guy that decided to put them on any respawn timer at all deserves to be sodomized.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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110% performance
What you're really saying here is that you don't perform near 100% most of the time and yet you overvalue your mediocrity. :P There should be no trash in a group scenario. Even lesser encounters should offer significant enough rewards to be valued. There should not be any respawns in instanced dungeons either. File these stupid design ideas along side permadeath, corpse runs and xp loss. I meant 110% performance in that there was nothing anyone could have done, proactively or reactively to avoid death. Just like sometimes, when you're fighting Mother Shiraz (one of the later Black Temple bosses) she parries your attack two times in a row and you die (parries in WoW reduce the time until your next swing). They're fixing that, because they realize that wiping because you rolled a 1 on some RNG is not fun. But I agree, trash mobs are full of lose. Respawns, however, are pants on head (to steal Yahtzee's shtick) retarded.
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Phred
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2025
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10 sec CD on Warrior Taunt; lot of spike DPS can happen in 10 secs, especially with Shamans.
Anyway; if tanks have to spam taunt at every CD, then something's wrong (and yeah, threat scaling for Prot Warriors is pretty fucking bad atm).
Not disagreeing with you but the point is you was you don't spam taunt as it is useless if you are already on top of the threat list.
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Venkman
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Posts: 11536
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Farming raid content for 2 nights and then leveling an alt to do the same? You wrote this to imply there was something wrong with WoW and yet you had no probably doing it since whenever you started. As old as this genre is I still get surprised when people have their epiphanies, write their epitaphs, and never quite realize that until that point, they were having fun. More people quit a game and move on before ever finishing it. But only MMOGs seem to compel the need for soap box departures. Otherwise, everything said in this thread has been very educational. The lack of Tanks is a problem on my server and guild. We're 7th in size by 20-something in progress (families, grandkids, lives, slow summers, rare weekends, etc), and for those not yet raiding, getting a tank to help whether from the guild, the alliance, or just some PUG joiner is almost nigh impossible without a calendar.
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Phunked
Terracotta Army
Posts: 249
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Farming raid content for 2 nights and then leveling an alt to do the same? You wrote this to imply there was something wrong with WoW and yet you had no probably doing it since whenever you started. As old as this genre is I still get surprised when people have their epiphanies, write their epitaphs, and never quite realize that until that point, they were having fun. More people quit a game and move on before ever finishing it. But only MMOGs seem to compel the need for soap box departures. Otherwise, everything said in this thread has been very educational. The lack of Tanks is a problem on my server and guild. We're 7th in size by 20-something in progress (families, grandkids, lives, slow summers, rare weekends, etc), and for those not yet raiding, getting a tank to help whether from the guild, the alliance, or just some PUG joiner is almost nigh impossible without a calendar. I wrote it to imply something slightly different. I accept that fact that once you beat it, it ends. My problem with WoW is that 1. They claim to provide you with content that by definition, should be repeatable and 2. It's designed so that you never "beat" the game. The fact of the matter is, most good games are made to be repeatable/replayable long after you finish the main plot/goal/whatever. MMORPGs are especially likely to have this feature because of the fact that they have no end. It's supposed to be a massive time sink. That's what draws people to keep playing over and over: the carrot that's always dangling in front of you. Hell, look at D2. That game was designed so that it only started after you beat the thing 3 times (once per difficulty). How many people killed Diablo/Baal once and said "fuck it, it's just going to be more of the same". The reason people write such long epitaphs about leaving MMOs is because they want to keep having fun. They don't want to throw away their toons that they've been working on for 2 years because they've run out of stuff to do. So they keep playing and playing, hoping that it will eventually become fun again. Then if it doesn't pick up after a while, they finally quit for good, bitter, jaded and burned out. And then they go to f13.net and bitch about it for years on end. I'll refer you to the SW:G threads and the general sense of disillusionment that fills this place. Perhaps if at some point dynamic content was released which was non linear and could offer a new gameplay experience every time you ran it the people who come here would bow before the comming of this new (digital) Robot Jesus.
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Reg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5281
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Don't pay any attention to Darniaq. He's still dramatizing his departure from SWG at least twice a week and that happened like two years ago. :)
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10633
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What was really depressing on that run is that we had a wipe on one of the Arcane Destroyers because I had to choose between interrupting an ability (Charged Fists. Makes it hit for 3+ ADDITIONAL damage for a period of time, the 3k also hits anyone in melee range) and staying ahead in threat. It casts this spell maybe every 2-3 seconds after my shield slam cools down, and it's a QUICK casting spell (1.5 seconds from the looks of it). Thanks to the Global Cooldown I was constantly missing the interrupt and eating huge spike damage because I just couldn't stop my skill rotation lest I lose aggro. The enhancement shammy picked up the slack on the interrupt and it was okay after that, but good god it was frustrating.
What's funny is that the bosses were largely no problem (ignoring the Nethermancer, who changes targets after blasting the primary aggro on the list with a huge slowdown/knockback) due to the super-exxxxxtreme DPS. Pathaleon was a joke compared to the trash waves before him I could just barely control. He died so hard he barely got to summon his adds.
You said you had an elemental AND an enhance shaman in that group and YOU were having to interrupt charged fist? That is 2 dps classes right there that can interrupt it. On the whole tank issue....I see people talk about not needing a threat meter till BWL pre-BC. I don't know of any guilds on the two realms I played on (one horde, one alliance) that ever used a threat meter, even my guild on Eldre'Thalas that was clearing Naxx. This whole new idea that you HAVE to have a threat meter to kill a mob shows that either something is really wrong with the game mechanics, or that people are too fucking lazy to not go nuts to the wall from the second the mob goes into combat, or a combination of both. Of course, I have not done any 25 mans cept a pug Gruul's at this point in BC so I don't know how much it is really necessary. I just know that the whole idea of having a "threat meter" pisses me off more than the e-peen DmgMeter tards that would wipe us on easy fights back in the day.
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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jpark
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1538
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So I think that there are many potential warrior tanks out there, but the design of the raiding game is conspiring against them succeeding.
True but that barrier to entry existed when WoW was launched - the arrival BC has not changed that basic dynamic. In fact - in some ways it is easier in BC - since resistances are no where as big as they used to be. Pre-BC you could eliminate a lot of tanks right off the bat because their Fire resistance was awful going into MC etc.
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"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation. " HaemishM.
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
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On the whole tank issue....I see people talk about not needing a threat meter till BWL pre-BC. I don't know of any guilds on the two realms I played on (one horde, one alliance) that ever used a threat meter, even my guild on Eldre'Thalas that was clearing Naxx.
This whole new idea that you HAVE to have a threat meter to kill a mob shows that either something is really wrong with the game mechanics, or that people are too fucking lazy to not go nuts to the wall from the second the mob goes into combat, or a combination of both.
It's mainly game mechanics that require it. Trash pulls, yeah it's people being idiots. I'm curious how your guild did fights in BWL like Vael without a threat meter. Broodlord was a lot easier with one too, because of his threat reset. Vael, however was designed to completely fuck people over if anyone but the tank pulls aggro, with the way he kills tanks and his breath weapon. You had to make sure the next tank was up there in threat and make sure that no DPS (who HAVE to DPS hard to get the fight done before you run out of tanks.) get Vael to turn and breathe on the raid. Broodlord was simply easier, because since ranged classes (other than hunters) didn't have a full aggro-wipe, they needed to watch themselves during the knock-back he's got that also reduces tank threat. Ranged DPS too high on the list, and he comes blast-waving & cleaving through all of your healing and DPS, one-shotting most of them.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Selby
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2963
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This whole new idea that you HAVE to have a threat meter to kill a mob shows that either something is really wrong with the game mechanics, or that people are too fucking lazy to not go nuts to the wall from the second the mob goes into combat, or a combination of both. Threat meters were required raiding tools in my guild from MC on. If you fucked up and pulled a boss off the tank and didn't have KTM installed, you were ridiculed and kicked from the raid. We had a few really dumb mages and warlocks who loved to spam their spells until they were out of mana and couldn't understand why the raid leaders were pissed when the mob stopped attacking the tank and went straight to the row of cloth wearing artillery in the back. For some reason I never had this problem as a mage because I knew that I generated aggro like mad and held back. I can see having the threat meter up if you are a bunch of people who don't know each other very well or don't understand the game mechanics, but it is still no guarantee that someone isn't going to spam DOTs all over the place and cause grief for the rest of the group.
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10633
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On the whole tank issue....I see people talk about not needing a threat meter till BWL pre-BC. I don't know of any guilds on the two realms I played on (one horde, one alliance) that ever used a threat meter, even my guild on Eldre'Thalas that was clearing Naxx.
This whole new idea that you HAVE to have a threat meter to kill a mob shows that either something is really wrong with the game mechanics, or that people are too fucking lazy to not go nuts to the wall from the second the mob goes into combat, or a combination of both.
It's mainly game mechanics that require it. Trash pulls, yeah it's people being idiots. I'm curious how your guild did fights in BWL like Vael without a threat meter. Broodlord was a lot easier with one too, because of his threat reset. Vael, however was designed to completely fuck people over if anyone but the tank pulls aggro, with the way he kills tanks and his breath weapon. You had to make sure the next tank was up there in threat and make sure that no DPS (who HAVE to DPS hard to get the fight done before you run out of tanks.) get Vael to turn and breathe on the raid. Broodlord was simply easier, because since ranged classes (other than hunters) didn't have a full aggro-wipe, they needed to watch themselves during the knock-back he's got that also reduces tank threat. Ranged DPS too high on the list, and he comes blast-waving & cleaving through all of your healing and DPS, one-shotting most of them. Three simple words which should have been used on any and every boss fight (which I found when I switch to alliance almost no one ever did): Wait For Assist. On Vael, the infinite rage and energy meant that the only people who had a chance of pulling aggro were rogues and warriors. All rogues vanish at 23%, then go to town. Every non-current tank is execute spamming like mad. The fight really was not that hard for us, we learned it in 2 nights. Broodlord was all about positioning for us. If the tank was backed to a wall, there was no aggro lost from the knockback because you never actually got knocked back. Only casters who could pull aggro on that fight were warlocks, and they would just wand for the first 20% usually. This was back in the 8 debuff slot days, so dot-happy warlocks were not allowed. Mark+Sunder+CoS+CoE were the "allowed" debuffs on bosses for us. I guess us "old time" horde raiders just don't understand why people seem to need threat meters because we all learned how to manage our aggro without having all this extra graphical math stuff getting in the way.
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
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I guess us "old time" horde raiders just don't understand why people seem to need threat meters because we all learned how to manage our aggro without having all this extra graphical math stuff getting in the way.
Because at the time, as a tank, it took the guesswork out of where you stood in relation to the other 4-5 tanks in Vael. Also, it simplifies your life and gives you a good benchmark on who is being retarded in your raid as a leader. Also, it takes away one aspect of leading by having to constantly manage everyone else's DPS. They can see it on the meter and know when they are supposed to back off. In a word "simplicity." This game is long enough in raids without wiping due to idiot dpsers.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Phred
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2025
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I'm curious how your guild did fights in BWL like Vael without a threat meter. Broodlord was a lot easier with one too, because of his threat reset. Vael, however was designed to completely fuck people over if anyone but the tank pulls aggro, with the way he kills tanks and his breath weapon. You had to make sure the next tank was up there in threat and make sure that no DPS (who HAVE to DPS hard to get the fight done before you run out of tanks.) get Vael to turn and breathe on the raid.
Broodlord was simply easier, because since ranged classes (other than hunters) didn't have a full aggro-wipe, they needed to watch themselves during the knock-back he's got that also reduces tank threat. Ranged DPS too high on the list, and he comes blast-waving & cleaving through all of your healing and DPS, one-shotting most of them.
I don't know about his guild but my guild mainly just relied on individuals to have a feel for their own threat on vael. It took a while to learn it but we got it down in a couple of days of trying and rarely lost a vael fight after the first kill. Mainly if I recall correctly our rogues had to learn exact positioning so as not to chain cleaves. Same with Broodlord though broodlord took a lot less attempts due to no one wanting to have to reclear that fucking guantlet every attempt. Bigwigs helped a ton as you got notice of when he knocked back in it and could feign/back off dps.
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« Last Edit: October 21, 2007, 01:45:40 PM by Phred »
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