Mists of Pandaria

[caladein]

I don't even use Heal on my healing Priest now.  Greater Healing Wave is a nice spot heal though so that's a blow, but better than losing Chain Heal or Healing Rain I suppose.

[Merusk]

It'll make a hell of a difference to my shadow priest and ele shaman.  I use those spells instead of bandages or if I got an add while leveling.  It was also nice to jump-in if the healer gets overwhelmed in 5-mans because the tank or another DPS got derpy and over-pulled.   Fuckers, I'm going to die more now.

[Rokal]

It'll make a hell of a difference to my shadow priest and ele shaman.  I use those spells instead of bandages or if I got an add while leveling.  It was also nice to jump-in if the healer gets overwhelmed in 5-mans because the tank or another DPS got derpy and over-pulled.   Fuckers, I'm going to die more now.

As far as I understand, they aren't removing all the healing spells from Ele shaman or Shadow priests. They're just removing most of them. You should still have 2-3 healing spells even as dps.

[Sheepherder]

If most of them actually did quit then they were being dumb. Healing was terrible in Wrath and much, much better in Cata, even at launch with the intensive mana micromanagement. I didn't do much BC healing and I've heard that's even better, but the changes were a net plus.

Let us play a rousing game of "spot the paladin."

TBC wasn't some golden age of healing.  It was pretty much the exact same shit that was in Wrath of the Lich King.

Cataclysm was the expansion wherein druids and disc priests were told that they were having fun the wrong way, shaman were told to amuse themselves with a box of scraps, and everyone got nerfed in just about every possible way to be nerfed.

[Fordel]

Speaking of healing changes, how about those spec changes that lock out healing spells that DPS/tanks used to use every so often  

- Resto Druids are now the only type of Druids that can use Regrowth, Nourish, and Lifebloom
- Holy Paladins are now the only type of Paladin that can use Holy Light
- Holy Priests are now the only type of Priest that can use Heal
- Resto Shaman are now the only type of Shaman that can use Healing Wave and G. Healing Wave

I'd accept that grudgingly, if that meant my Moonkin's mana was a none issue or gone entirely. Off spec healing was pretty much worthless in Cata regardless.

[Rokal]

Moonkin mana shouldn't really be an issue right now unless you aren't moving between solar/lunar eclipses. The only time I run into mana issues on my moonkin is when I make the mistake of trying to use hurricane.

[Fordel]

Which is exactly what I am referring too. When I was playing early expansion, I did anything BUT my single target rotation, I was running on fumes.


I don't like anything they did to my Moonkin in Cata though, somewhere between Wrath and Cata, my Moonkin went from a DD nuker to this stupid dot spreading low pressure gimmick assist.

[Rokal]

Mushrooms and tab DoT replaced hurricane for aoe, which makes you wonder why they bothered keeping hurricane and updating the spell effect. I didn't love how my Moonkin played in Cata either (though I never seriously tried playing one before that). Between the ugly character model, the awkward aoe, and the fact that your dps was worthless if you didn't follow a very strict rotation for eclipses, it just wasn't a fun character to play. Figuring out when to refresh dots, given eclipse, was also pretty unintuitive.

Overall my druid was my least favorite character that I leveled to 85. I played a druid as my main horde side in vanilla, and I was really excited to finally get an alliance race for druids besides lame Night Elves. Feral cat was like rogue dps with all the fun abilities removed. Feral bear was an extremely boring/simple tank spec. Balance I had plenty of issues with, listed above. HoT healing has never really been my thing, so I didn't bother trying resto when I had a level-cap priest that I already enjoyed healing with.

[Sjofn]

The problem is they took HoT healing away, essentially. And that was totally the most fun thing about druid healing, I was very sad when they decided to boring it up for them.

[SurfD]

Mushrooms and tab DoT replaced hurricane for aoe, which makes you wonder why they bothered keeping hurricane and updating the spell effect. I didn't love how my Moonkin played in Cata either (though I never seriously tried playing one before that). Between the ugly character model, the awkward aoe, and the fact that your dps was worthless if you didn't follow a very strict rotation for eclipses, it just wasn't a fun character to play. Figuring out when to refresh dots, given eclipse, was also pretty unintuitive.

Overall my druid was my least favorite character that I leveled to 85. I played a druid as my main horde side in vanilla, and I was really excited to finally get an alliance race for druids besides lame Night Elves. Feral cat was like rogue dps with all the fun abilities removed. Feral bear was an extremely boring/simple tank spec. Balance I had plenty of issues with, listed above. HoT healing has never really been my thing, so I didn't bother trying resto when I had a level-cap priest that I already enjoyed healing with.

The biggest thing they did that impacted moonkin in Cata was the Lunar Shower change.  I loved wrath where I could sit in Solar Eclipse and spam the hell out of Sunfire on everything in sight and do super efficient AoE as long as I properly planned for it by being in Solar Eclipse when the AoE started.   Then they fucked up Lunar Shower to make Sunfire / Moonfire generate Solar / Lunar power and it kind of went to hell from there.  That and Mushrooms are a stupidly clunky mechanic.  Nothing like wasting 3 global cooldowns to place mushrooms only to have the tank pull everything out of their blast radius seconds before you set them off.

[FieryBalrog]

If most of them actually did quit then they were being dumb. Healing was terrible in Wrath and much, much better in Cata, even at launch with the intensive mana micromanagement. I didn't do much BC healing and I've heard that's even better, but the changes were a net plus.

Let us play a rousing game of "spot the paladin."

TBC wasn't some golden age of healing.  It was pretty much the exact same shit that was in Wrath of the Lich King.

Cataclysm was the expansion wherein druids and disc priests were told that they were having fun the wrong way, shaman were told to amuse themselves with a box of scraps, and everyone got nerfed in just about every possible way to be nerfed.

I'm a disc priest (I was Holy in Wrath). Like I said, I didn't heal in TBC (was playing my rogue) but I do know that disc barely existed as an actual spec in its own right.

Wrath healing was awful. "snipe each others heals so this guy doesn't get globaled" + "infinite mana" + "super twitch heals". Ughhhh. I like managing my mana. It's what makes healing actually somewhat interesting and strategic. Looking at everything through the prism of "nerf" vs "buff" isn't helpful.

[Fordel]

Disc was the 'pvp' spec in TBC, if I remember right.

[luckton]

Disc was the 'pvp' spec in TBC, if I remember right.

Yep.

[Azazel]

I wouldn't say that I want tanking to be meaningful. I just want to have an impact on the fight.

I get that 'meaningful' is the new buzz word to hate in gaming, but how else would you summarize the gameplay you just outlined?

You do have an impact on the fight as a tank right now, it's just not... meaningful   You're contributing dps. You're reducing some of the damage you take. It just doesn't add up to much.  

Tanking is already stressful enough in PUGs filled with fuckwits. The new Prot warrior rage generation mechanics look like balls. If they want to make PUG queues even longer then fucking with warrior tanking to make it any more complex or "meaningful" is the way to do it. There are already enough bad tanks out there without making their job any more complex.

[Azazel]

RE: "Meaningful"

Arcane Mage DPS

 Rotation
1)  Flame Orb
2)  Arcane Blast until your mana is less than 90% BUT ensure you have cast it 4 times
3)  Arcane Missiles

Also use these as often as possible!
1)  Mirror Image
2)  Arcane Power
3)  Mana Gem

 Mage Armor is the self buff used
 Focus Magic is cast on another high crit DPS

[Rokal]

Tanking is already stressful enough in PUGs filled with fuckwits. The new Prot warrior rage generation mechanics look like balls. If they want to make PUG queues even longer then fucking with warrior tanking to make it any more complex or "meaningful" is the way to do it. There are already enough bad tanks out there without making their job any more complex.

Having room to improve as a tank, and having that improvement impact your groups doesn't necessarily mean tanking will be more stressful. If anything, it gives you the ability to greater influence the success of your group when the rest of your group isn't great.

Take Lay on Hands and Deathstrike, again, as examples. These abilities reward you for playing well and paying attention as a tank. They can save you and make your life less stressful if your healer isn't playing great.

Another possible way to make tanking more 'meaningful' would be giving them true dps rotations and increasing their total DPS. Then, as a tank, if I play well I can make the run go faster and cover for group members that aren't pulling enough dps. If you don't want to bother because you think tanking is stressful, you can ignore your DPS abilities because Heroic dungeons are unlikely to ever be demanding for any class role in the future.

It's an option, just like playing well or barely paying attention is an option for dps classes. The difference is that playing well as a tank currently doesn't really get you or your group anything, so why bother?

Completely original observation about arcane being easy

Three abilities you rotate between and three cooldowns to use is still a long way from "cast icebolt until the boss is dead". People say arcane is too easy, but if you play arcane well you'll see a noticeable improvement: your dps will go up, you'll be able to kill adds faster or take advantage of burn phases by planning ahead. There is an obvious path to improve, and an obvious increase to how you influence the fights in the groups you're in.

[Paelos]

Having room to improve as a tank...

Let me stop you right there. Stop assuming people want to improve, ever. The game is what? Six years old now? People don't want to relearn shit and improve. They want new content.

[Rokal]

I disagree. I think if we went back to having extremely shallow gameplay like icebolt spam, most people would enjoy the game less. There is a sweet spot for most players that exists between 'too simple' and 'too complex'.

You say people don't want to see class changes but every expansion has a class feedback threads *full* of people requesting changes to their classes. "Give paladins more aoe healing", "Make pets more distinct", "Remove min range from hunters", "Give me a reason to use something besides instant/deadly".

The hunter class saw huge changes in Cata and most people actually seemed to really like it. Warlocks are seeing huge changes to their class in MoP, and most warlocks seem excited about them too.

People don't just want new content, they want the game to feel new and exciting. Making how your class plays more rewarding is one way of doing that. I don't think playing a tank, currently, is very rewarding. Part of the reason for that, imo, is because tanks don't have room to improve. You compare against other tanks, or even yourself at the beginning of the expansion, based solely on stats and nothing else.

[Ingmar]

Having my class change a good amount each expansion was part of what kept me playing for so long, I would say.

[Fordel]

Class change is great until I don't like the changes. 

[Selby]

Class change is great until I don't like the changes. 

That's why I have 9 different classes all maxed out ;-)

[Paelos]

Class changes and the desire to improve are not the same thing at all.

People like to have their class upgraded. People hate to have their class nerfed. Neither of those things has anything to do with them wanting to get better at how they play.

[Rokal]

Class changes and the desire to improve are not the same thing at all.

People like to have their class upgraded. People hate to have their class nerfed. Neither of those things has anything to do with them wanting to get better at how they play.

It's not as simple as that. People don't just want their class to get more powerful, they want their class to change a little bit too. That's why people get excited about new spells in each expansion, rather than power creep from stats. New spells usually do add complexity to your class: it's another ability to consider using, and if it's really useful you need to figure out how to work it into your normal gameplay. It's something different that your class couldn't do before, because after two years of playing your class you're ready for something to change.

I don't think the community was knocking down Blizzard's door saying "give us more complex rotations than just casting frostbolt!" but I also didn't hear people complaining when mage spells were fleshed out to encourage you to use more than one spell. By your logic, the game should have never moved beyond vanilla class design since people didn't want change or complexity, they just wanted more power. I'm sure we'd all love to play your version of WoW where tanks just spam sunder armor forever, rogues only cast SS and evis, mages only cast frostbolt, and druids just spam healing touch. If Blizzard never expanded the basic gameplay beyond what people were used to, regardless of the fact that the community wasn't asking for it, that's the game we'd all be playing. Or not, since that sort of gameplay would get stale much much faster than any of the current class designs.

I still can't get over the fact that there are people in this thread that had a problem with me saying "Give tanks the ability to have a greater influence on the success of their group if they want to."   This feels like the dumbest, least productive discussion so far on the WoW sub-forums after a long series of dumb, unproductive discussions.

[apocrypha]

Class changes and the desire to improve are not the same thing at all.

People like to have their class upgraded. People hate to have their class nerfed. Neither of those things has anything to do with them wanting to get better at how they play.

You've not seen DPS competing over the meters then? I even see healers doing it. Usually in extremely good humour - banter not bickering. Trying to be top of the meters is a huge amount of fun for many people.

Trying to progress through hard/heroic raid content is a lot of fun for a lot of people, and they do it by getting better at the fights.

[Ironwood]

I disagree.

Yeah, we know.  And this is the problem.

You're not right.  You haven't been right yet.

[Merusk]

I'll give a rats ass about "getting better" at playing when it gets me ahead in my career or my personal relationships.   Same attitude since having guys watch me play PacMan at the local pizza place and tell my 8 year-old-old self I was doing it all wrong.  I play at the level I play, I'll tweak based on things I hear or read but I don't actively seek out the min/max and get pissed when I'm not at my class's peak.

It's a damn game.  Nobody cares how good you are at it but yourself.   Meter competitions?  How many care about you being at the top other than for themselves?  And if you care so much that it really bothers you beyond natural competitive behaviour, I'll argue your priorities are fucked or you've got little else to cling to in your life.

Yeah, I went there, despite being the guy who started the bad groups thread.  It's one thing to bitch when folks frustrate you or set a goal to amuse yourself in your hobby.  It's entirely another to say, "you should care about getting better!"

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's like all those faux hardcore guilds I used to roll in. Sure we were top of the server but we weren't ever getting world firsts, we were behind by months. It's actually that second teir of raiders that tend to be the most oboxious and elitist, always talking about 'bads' and having to carry others. Kind of like someone who tried out for pro baseball and couldnt quite make it so he acts like a total douche in the softball league.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, I can't stand it when someone is telling me I'm healing wrong when no-one has died or has even come close.

Fuck those assholes.  Especially since my dps meter says you lost 2k just typing out shit about my fucking healing you prole.

[Azazel]

I'll give a rats ass about "getting better" at playing when it gets me ahead in my career or my personal relationships.   Same attitude since having guys watch me play PacMan at the local pizza place and tell my 8 year-old-old self I was doing it all wrong.  I play at the level I play, I'll tweak based on things I hear or read but I don't actively seek out the min/max and get pissed when I'm not at my class's peak.

It's a damn game.  Nobody cares how good you are at it but yourself.   Meter competitions?  How many care about you being at the top other than for themselves?  And if you care so much that it really bothers you beyond natural competitive behaviour, I'll argue your priorities are fucked or you've got little else to cling to in your life.

Yeah, I went there, despite being the guy who started the bad groups thread.  It's one thing to bitch when folks frustrate you or set a goal to amuse yourself in your hobby.  It's entirely another to say, "you should care about getting better!"

Well fucking said.

I just want to play the game. I don't want to have to worry about "improving" or "getting better". Quite frankly, the people on the forums are essentially the hardcore and the fuckwits spamming trade chat 24/7. I couldnt' give a fuck about what they think. My wife isn't a "gamer" but she plays games. It's a good thing that there are relatively easy classes to play like Arcane or Frost mage so people who don't want WoW to be their life's work are able to enjoy it too. Sometimes this forum reminds me of the wankers I grouped with last week who were going on about how they're waiting for "Blizzard to make this game hard again". I unironically suggested that they go try Vanguard if they wanted a hard game/challenge, and told them that WoW is a softcock carebear game compared to old-school EQ.

I don't really want more abilities and spells. I already don't have any fucking space to put them. I want them to pretty much leave things the fuck alone for my classes and just give me new content. I'm overall happy with my Prot warrior and my multi-spec mage.

Lakov - you're absolutely right. All day in trade these guilds are recruiting for "exceptional DPS needed for vlah blah ljkhlkjhlo8iyu guild" Or when they nuke before I've pulled then bitch about having had aggro for a couple of seconds. Luckily as a tank I can tell them to fuck off. "Worst" happens and they kick me, I have another instant queue.

Anyway - what the fuck is "Give tanks the ability to have a greater influence on the success of their group if they want to." supposed to mean? Hold aggro and don't die. DPS at the same time. Cope with fucktarded DPS players and lead the group around in the dungeon. Hit some cooldowns and take down the boss or trash pack while the others all die around you on occasion. What the fuck more do you want? Given the number of shitty tanks I have to group with as a DPS, I actually want tanking to be relatively easy. And fuck it, for myself too. I have enough stress at work without asking for more in a computer game.

[Fabricated]

I still can't get over the fact that there are people in this thread that had a problem with me saying "Give tanks the ability to have a greater influence on the success of their group if they want to."   This feels like the dumbest, least productive discussion so far on the WoW sub-forums after a long series of dumb, unproductive discussions.

I don't mind having more control over the success or failure of my group, really. I have issues with the idea of playing DPS when I have to count on the tank even more than I normally do.

To be honest, I'm as good at this game as I'm ever going to be, which is pretty alright but not uber-guild level. This is definitely a fear of change, but I personally don't relish the idea of responsibility shifts since I'm used to my current expectations. Healers came to the horrific realization at the beginning of Cata that avoidable group damage -had- to be avoided almost perfectly at the entry gear levels of raids/heroics; you couldn't power through it with CDs and pull of squeaker kills where you're tossing out whatever you have left after running out of gas. Nope; if the DPS didn't know HOW to handle the crystal shards on Corborus properly, welp, it's unhealable they die and you get kicked because you "suck". Responsibility can really suck if you need to count on other people as a part of it.

[El Gallo]

I still can't get over the fact that there are people in this thread that had a problem with me saying "Give tanks the ability to have a greater influence on the success of their group if they want to."   This feels like the dumbest, least productive discussion so far on the WoW sub-forums after a long series of dumb, unproductive discussions.

This new species of button-mashing will either make a noticeable difference or it won't.  If it does, it won't be optional.  It'll be mandatory because encounters will be balanced around it and, even if they aren't, if you don't do it you will get a cascade of FUCKING FAIL TANK FUCKING FUCK YOU SUCK DICK FUCKING NOOB L2P in /g. 

This for the role that (1) already has the greatest influence on the success or failure of the group and (2) is by far the most under-queued role in /lfd, to the point that Blizzard bribes them with rare vanity drops.

If you want to be a better tank, take the time to learn the best way to pull every pack and handle every boss gimmick in the instance, because you get to shepherd the cats.  If that's not challenging enough, do the same for heroic raid encounters.  If that's still not testing your gamer skills enough, join a serious arena team or move to Seoul and become a Starcraft pro. 

[Lantyssa]

The fuck is a tank supposed to do to influence success or failure more?

Manage aggro?  Check.
Herd cats?  Check.
Guide mobs out of/into fire?  Check.

Do they need to start healing, too?  DPS more than DPS or else the group fails?  Have a "press me NOW or die" button?  Reach the hit/uncrittable/stat-of-the-expansion cap harder?

How do you change what they do to influence the game without severely changing the dynamics of the game to an extent that you either don't piss the majority off or have to alter the DPS and Healing paradigm as well?

[Ironwood]

What with Vengeance and all, I'm regularly doing most of the dps.

[Zetor]

Same here... and as a blood DK I can solo quite a few heroic bosses if everyone dies to fire early on 

I've heard that tank dps is lower in the beta, but haven't really bothered to check into it.

[Rokal]

The fuck is a tank supposed to do to influence success or failure more?

Did you seriously not even read the last page? Examples of "How tanks could influence groups more" already given are things like giving them more cooldowns with self control (Lay on Hands, Death Strike), or the ability to impact or plan for a bad situation with something besides taunt (group-wide damage reduction similar to Rally Shout or group-wide shield wall). Every attempt at actually discussing this topic has been de-railed by people who continue to miss the point. Yes, we know tanking is the role with the lowest representation. Making tanking more interesting and giving you the ability to improve as a tank doesn't have to mean scaring more people away from tanking. If done well it could result in more people playing tanks.

How to do tanking wrong: leave tanking the way it is now, but make it harder for tanks to do the things they're already doing. Leaving shield block the way it is but making it harder to get the rage to use it is doing tanking wrong. The best example of this is leather tanks in other MMOs, where you have to keep up buffs on yourself in order to get the mitigation of a plate tank. You have to work as a tank just to get the mitigation that other tanks get passively, and your group suffers if you fail to keep them up. This isn't what I'm talking about. I'm not saying "give tanking a skill curve so that you can tell the good tanks from the bad tanks!"

How to do tanking right: leave the requirements to tank successfully as they are now, but gives tanks more interesting things to do that can influence the success of their group. Taking the T13 4-piece bonus and making it permanent (shield walls for group) is a start. Stampeding roar is another good example. You don't have to use it, ultimately your group is responsible for getting out of the fire. But if you're paying attention as a tank you can use it to increase the chance that your group actually will get out of the fire and succeed.