Avoiding the Body By WoW

So, this is obviously a common topic of discussion amongst gamers and non-gamers alike. How do you keep yourself (or your loved ones) healthy while allowing you/them to enjoy their hobby of choice. Alot of people blame video games for the high rates of Obesity in America. Well, it’s not the games fault. It’s the lifestyle that most gamers choose to live while being a gamer. Yes yes, I know, alot of people who game are more than capable of remaining in very good physical shape and keeping a healthy social life as well.

“Arenas were a mistake”

So, I spilled water on my laptop last week, and after giving it a few days rest, it seems to have recovered almost completely. Some of the keys are a bit stickier than usual.

Anyways, so, over the weekend Blizzard bigwig Jeff Kaplan (I think it was Kaplan) said during an interiew that the biggest mistake in WoW was the creation of Arenas. His reasoning was that the class balaning tango they have had to constantly change has been a constant headache for player and Dev alike. This I can understand.

One of the reasons that I have heard as to why class balance wasn’t as big of a headache back in vanilla was the fact that it’s alot easier to hide imbalances in a BG or world PvP where any number of outside forces can influence the outcome of a skirmish. This I believe.

And while I do enjoy the occasional Arena night ( except last night. It was horrible. We went 1-12), I do think that the way blizzard has been forced to balance classes not on how they do against raid bosses but rather by how the fare against other players is a disappointment. So, I guess I kind of agree that Arenas were certainly a HUGE mistake. I just can’t bring myself to condemn them as the BIGGEST mistake. Of course, nothing else comes to mind right now as being worse…but I’ll keep pondering and see if I think of anything.

How about you guys? Do you think Arenas were the single biggest mistake in WoW? Or do you think something esle is the bane of your existance?

Tank questionnaire

So, although this is mostly a holy paladin blog, I do have a lvl 80 warrior and DK, both of whom are tank/dps dual-specced. I used to lvoe DK tanking, it was interesting, unique, fun, and pretty intuitive. Since 3.2 I have enjoyed it less and less. My DK seems to ahve very little health comapred to tanks in his gear range, he has less armor than he used to, avoidance is a big issue, and I’ve never been good with cooldowns, which are becoming the basis of DK tanking. So, when given the choice between the two, I have foudn myself re-discovering the joy of warrior tanking, which I hadn’t done since runnign Strath at lvl back in classic.

So, here is my response to the Tank version of Miss Medicina‘s healer meme I answered a few posts ago. This one I saw on Achtung Panzercow.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Llothran, Warrior, using the “new black” as Panzer calls it; 15/3/53. I like it, I find it to be good on threat and survivability.

What is your usual tanking environment?
5-mans mostly, as he is a relatively fresh tank. I hope to get him into Ulduar next weekend. I have tanked Ulduar, Ony and the first encounter in ToCr on my DK.

What is your favorite encounter to tank, and why?
So far I would say Grobbulus. I personally think Kiting is one of my strong points as a tank, and Grobbulus is overall a fun fight, even though he was the bane of my guild while we were working through Naxx.

What is your least favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Thorim arena. I find it very difficult to get aggro on all of the mobs spawning from various sides of the room. Plus having my healers occasionally stunned/spell locked does NOT help.

What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
I lol’d so hard when I read Panzer say ” Also, all warriors automatically spec 5/5 Improved Badass and 3/3 Irresistable Sexeh, which are talents not available to any other tank class.” So I’ll leave it at that. But yah, single target threat and pretty nice assist abilities are cool.

What do you think is the biggest weakness of your class, and why?
AoE. Hands down.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best tanking assignment for you?
/cower in the corner. I don’t like 25mans at all, our guild largely avoids them as when we ahve tried them it has lead to nothing but drama and aggrivation.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the most?
I’ll say druids simply because my favorite tank in our guild is a druid, and she is awesome and I would stand in fire w/o a second guess if she told me it would help the raid

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the least?
Anyone who has an OCD complex when it comes to threat, particularly a certain OTHER prot warrior in my guild.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Not using my cooldowns at the proper time. This and when a tank, I always place raid wipes on myself, where as, when I am a healer, I always think it was someone else’s fault

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
OCD taunt’s from the other tank. And Knockbacks. Just ask my GM or Coccinelle how I feel about knockbacks.

Do you feel your class/spec is balanced with respect to the other tanking classes?
I think we have amazing survivability, (good) warriors can gen as much threat as any of the other classes.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Omen, recount. If my dps are able to go full burn w/o pulling the boss off me, I’m doing my job. If they can’t full burn w/o risk of pulling off me, I ain’t doing my job.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have with your tanking class?
That we can’t gen threat as well as the other 3. While we do require more skill to gen and keep threat up, we are just as capable, if not more so, than the other three (on a single target or 2. 3 or more targets and we fail).

What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about tanking?
Panzer said it perfectly, so I’m jsut gonna stick his answer in quotes: “The priority system that you have to use to maximize DPS and threat. Warriors are, as far as I can tell, far and away the most complicated and active of the four tank classes. We have a veritable metric assload of abilities that we use, and we don’t have a fixed rune rotation like DKs or a “969″ setup like paladins.  We have to make split-second decisions based on what’s off cooldown and what’s lit up.  It’s not hard to learn, but it takes some work for it to become second nature.”

If someone were to evaluate your tanking ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
Um….ugh….well I like to take advantage of my groups CC when I can…when mobs get lose you’ll see me flying across the room with reckless abandon.

Stamina or Avoidance, and why?
Right now I have gemmed/chanted almost entirely for def, so for now, while I am still gearing up, I’ll say avoidance. Once I start getting my hands on some Ulduar/badge gear I’ll work to put a lil more padding on my green bar.

Which tanking class do you understand the least?
Druids. My paladin was a tank all through BC and up till he started doing heroics in Wrath. My DK was/is a tank and has been as far in Ulduar as Thorim. My poor druid is still lvl 74 and not getting any higher any time soon.

What addons or macros do you currently use to aid you in tanking?
Omen, Recount, Xperl frames, healbot (allows me to put vigilance or to intervene a friendly with the click of a button and w/o switching target) tankmastery (tells me and anyone in /say range if another tank has taunted off me or if a dps has used a knockback) DBM, Parrot.

Do you strive for a balance in tanking stats, or do you stack some higher than others, and why?
Wearign mostly ToCh 5man heroic gear, I’d say I’m pretty balanced. Once I start getting some Ulduar/badge/t9 stuff I’ll probly have room to gem for more Stamina.

 

Faction Champions

So, we FINALLY downed the Faction Champs in 10man ToCr. Man that felt great! We changed up our strategy and group a bit compared to usual. I’m a little frazzled as Twin Valkyr kicked our butts because lazy dps weren’t getting the orbs so there was SO much healing that we ahd to do cuz of all the orbs flying around.

Bright Idea!

So, I had a great idea driving home from a work meeting this morning. One of the new guys at work said that he was also a professional gamer, he plays in Madden tournaments and such where he has won a few of those giant fake checks they give to golfers and such. So I was thinking, gamers of all genres can be “professional” by entering tournies and winning said tournies. From Madden/EA Sports, Call of Duty/SoCom/Halo, to WoW Arena tournies. But what if there was another way? Every gamer has the dream of being able to make a “decent” living off gaming. Now, WoW has something like 13 MILLION subscribers…13 FUCKING MILLION. Thats ( I would imagine) more people than the NFL has fans. If I’m a product rep, PR person, Ad rep etc. of a corporation who manufactures or sells a product that could possibly, conceivably, maybe linked to gaming….I would do everything I could to get my name into the World of WoW. Now, saying this, I don’t mean I want an NPC giving me a quest to go rescue 6 crates of Mountain Dew from some orcs. I don’t want ads IN the game. But, if I’m selling Monster(c) Energy Drinks, why not contact the GM of a top guild like Ensidia or Vodka and say “hey, if you and your officers go to Blizzcon/Comicon/Other Convention related to gaming/fantasy etc, we’ll pay you guys to go and wear shirts that say “Vodka, powered by Monster(c)” WHY HAS NO ONE THOUGHT OF THIS!? 13 MILLION PEOPLE play WoW. Get your damn name out there. Get the top arena players to go to these tournaments wearing a DELL hat/bandana/shirt etc. (Dells suck, don’t buy a Dell. Seriously, I sell computers for a living. Don’t buy a Dell.) And BAM! instant marketing. Not only will you get publicity from these guys wearing your gear, but your guarunteed to get Pub from sites that talk about WoW (i.e. mine or WoW.com). So far, only Mountain Dew (and Hot Pockets i think?) have taken advantage of this. For any other Ad rep/PR dude who reads this….I just saved your job. Give me a cut

Being overgeared is fun!

So, I logged on late last night, only to find most of my guildies had already run the daily. Syl hadn’t yet, so we decided to scrounge up some deeps and go squish some bugs. The surprising thing was that of the three dps we found (one guildie lock and  2 randoms: rogue/kitty) only one of them was in epix. It made me kinda reaize how us veteran players take for granted the gearing process and how ToC5 has changed that process a bit. Anyways, these two randoms were realy nice ppl who knew their classes well, and I was glad to have traveled with them. The kitty got the tank trinket off the 2nd boss and our lock got the wand of Anewb. Anyways, back to the point of this post; having an overgeared tank and healer makes heroic a joke. Our dps was light, with none of them being above 2k overall. That’s fine, we had not a single death! Syl never lost aggro (except the one time I pulled off her, healing aggro ftw?) and it was a nice breezy 10-15 minute heroic Azjol run. Good times for all.

 

Edit: I think I’ll do a post later about other things veteran players take for granted, as I think that would be a fun brainstorm!

Banhammer

So, Ghostcrawler dropped a banhammer on an unfortunate (not me) forum troll this week, as the bannee had told GC to DIAF (die in a fire). The reason? Possible 3.3 pali nerfs. Now, I personally think these nerfs are horribly unneeded, uncalled for, unneccessary and mostly, uncool. As alot of people have pointed out, Paladins have been a constant whipping boy for the life of WoW. In classic, they were “loladins” and “retardadins”. Pali’s were a support class. They couldn’t do competitive dps, they couldn’t tank, they couldn’t really heal, even though blizzard claimed they could do all 3. In BC their holy and prot specs got reworked. Palis could tank, and could really heal. Ret was still weak. In Wrath, Bam! Paladins could do everything, they were the “golden” children of Blizzard. Ret was “just right” according to Blizzard, and the Paladin class had finally been shown some attempts at making them a real class. Then the QQcommunity was in an uproar over Pali’s being TOO good. So we got nerfed in 3.1. We gt nerfed in 3.2. Now we’r getting nerfed in 3.3. That’s fine, if we are too far above what the other classes are and need to be brought down a bit fine. But seriously, make up your mind! We were “just right” from your standards, but because other classes couldn’t kill us, we were nerfed. So, for the first time in game history, 5 years, paladins were able to perform all 3 of their roles effectively, yet we still need nerfs. This makes no sense, we are one of only 2 class (druids I’ll give you some credit here) that blizzard has said “you can do this, that AND the other thing!…..except we arn’t going to give you the gear or talents needed for that or the other thing, so you can only do this.” Every other class since day 1 has been able to perform their main roles. Yes, even the whiny mages have been able to put out competitive dps since launch. Warriors could tank, priests could heal, shamans….actually I’v never played a shaman so…..w/e I’m done ranting, I forgot the whole point of this post

900 Arena

So last night, we had our obligatory 10 arena matches, and we got upto 900. It was a bit of a rough night, I think we went like 4-6. Not out best effort. We went up against a few teams who were just plain better than us, but mostly it was us just being dumb and not working together at all.

Anyways, our team is me(healadin), Sylvanta(lolcat), and Eirgor(arms warrior). Not a typical build at all, but it’s more to us about having fun than dominating on classes we don’t enjoy.

So, the best part of last night, was this one match in Lordearon Ruins, against a hunter/rogue/healadin group. Not sure who died first (or second, or third or fourth) although I do know the hunter killed me and I killed the rogue, but it came down to Syl vs. the Healadin. It was hilarious. Dude would pop a heal, Syl would bash/cyclone etc, bring him down to like 20-30% before he would pop a few more heals. Eventually the healabitch won, as his healing was > than feral heals, but just sitting there for 3-4 minutes watching these two go toe to toe was hilarious for me. Eirgor and I were howling at the end of it when the healer finally killed Syl. That made it a good night, right there.

World of Warcraft: An Intro

I have been playing World of Warcraft since October of 2006, so pretty much exactly 3 years. My main is Llothan, Holy/Retribution paladin of the Symphony of Shadow guild on the Blackwater Raiders server. My guild is a casual guild as far as our schedule and the skill of a majority of our membership. We do however have a small group of very skilled and motivated raiders who hope to progress through all the content we can. We have the occasional spout of guild drama, undergeared/underskilled players getting mad when we don’t invite them to a raid that our best people still struggle with. We are currently 9/14 in Ulduar-10, 1/1 Onyxia-10 and 2/5 in ToCr-10. While this is certainly not impressive when you compare it to other guilds on other servers, keep in mind that our server is horrendously low on the overall server rankings (around 3rd from the bottom or something rediculous). There are only 3 guilds that I am aware of who have downed Algalon. We just downed Hodir this past weekend, leaving only Mimiron and Freya as our remaining Keepers, before we move onto Vezzak and Yoggy. In ToCr we just can NOT get past the Faction Champs. Very few of us do any real pvping (I’m on a 3v3 team with a 800 rating, we are the only arena team in our guild) so it is a very difficult switch in mentality for our guild to make. Anyways, I am one of the main healers of our progressions runs and I absolutely love it. I love the excitement of the raid bosses, I love the feeling of downing a boss who has caused you nothing but frusteration upto that point, and most of all, I love the people I raid with. They are awesome people, and I am glad to know them. So as far as blogging about WoW, my focuses will be on healing, paladins, raiding, a little bit of pvp, being an officer in a 300+ member guild, and a sprinkle or two of RP (if i feel like it). Hopefully there will be something for everyone, if not, gtfo. Cheers!