Fortune Favors

You may recall a while back when I mentioned that I had respecced Prot to tank for the guild.  Almost anyone who talked to me at least once in-game will also recall me saying how much I hated it.  There was much rejoicing on my part when I gave up and switched back.

Yeah, we’ll need a real tank eventually, but right now we have some pretty awesome healers so I can pretty much healadin-tank my way through Utgarde Keep.

Speccing Protection for a while was a decent learning experience though.  I reccomend that all healers should try tanking specs if they can for at least a while, and vice-versa, just to see how it is on the other end of the spectrum. One of my strengths as a tank is I’m very much aware of what’s going on with the healers, and as a healer I’m now more aware of the mechanics that the tanks have to use when the DPS or healer screws up.  Some of those mechanics are pally-specific, but not all.

And that leads to the main topic of this post: I really, really like playing a hunter.

Wait, what?

Hunters are more than just DPS, they’re a party in and of themselves.  The pet tanks, the hunter heals the pet and does DPS.  That’s all 3 roles right there.  Would it be better with living, breathing people filling those roles for you?  Yes, but warm bodies aren’t always availible.

I have a paladin and a hunter in both guilds, and while hunter leveling is coming along smoothly for the hunters – McSplat (Alli, NE) is level 32 and Kerrsplat (Horde, BE) is quickly catching up.  Meanwhile my Horde pally is stuck as a severely non-twinked 19 bank alt.

I’ve even discovered something – I love to tank when it’s not me taking the hits.

Kerrsplat tamed himself a bear and specced Beast Mastery because we really didn’t have any characters who were ready to be tanks and the other hunters were speccing Marksman.  As a result Sherman the bear can hold aggro and hold it well without taking a dirt nap.  My experience as a healer has me keeping one eye on Omen and the health bars of everyone to see if I need to help anyone out, and my experience as a tank has me knowing how to do that.

And it rocks.

So last night I did something a little crazy – I spent well over 1,000 g in new gear and respecced protection.  The gear isn’t the best an 80 can get, I’ll probably have to respec a few more times to get the talent points just right, and I haven’t even TOUCHED my glyphs … but I’ve officially made the switch from “healadin” to “tankadin.”

… I feel dirty.

It still seems kind of odd to me.  I leveled Splat as holy spec, and while this isn’t the first time I’ve shuffled her talent points she always had the majority of them in holy.  Never seriously considered any other spec for Splat until now.

So why the switch?  Because we needed a tank.

My lovely wife Mel may be a prot spec warrior but she’s had enough computer issues and some medical ones to boot that when minor cause a few seconds delay and at worse require her to go AFK for a boss fight or two.  In a casual guild this is understandable (real life comes first and all of that), but right now she’s much better as an off-tank or DPS because of it.

And we tried having Inch’s pet Evilfluffy tank Nexus.  We downed Keristrasza, but when the killing blow comes from the party healer it’s time to rethink some things.

So I’ve switched to prot, at least for now.  I’m sure I’ll make some a few a ton of mistakes as I learn how to really tank (and not just hold agro by healing myself), but with more than one decent priest in the guild I guess it’s for the best.

…

/sniff

When World of Warcraft first came out it was hailed as an awesome MMORPG, which indeed it is.  Unfortunately (in my opinion), many players don’t quite get the “RP” in “MMORPG.”

I’m not saying everyone who plays WoW has to actually role-play their character, mind you.  After all, I’ve created a gnome warrior named “Theyhitme” not once, but twice.  Not exactly prime RP material there.

But I do think that creating a character, assigning it a history and personality, and then pretending to be that character in game for a short length of time is a fun diversion.  I first got into pen-and-paper roleplaying games because I got to explore dungeons, kill dragons, and level up.  I kept playing those games because I got to do improvisational acting.  WoW isn’t so much different from that.

Granted, Trollbane is not the best server for that.  As a “Normal” server it’s great for leveling and learning the game, but start pretending your character is real and people will look at you funny.  When I’m in the mood for roleplaying, I’ll often just look for whichever of the RP flagged servers has the lowest number of people online.  Lately, that’s been the brand spankin’ new Wyrmrest Accord server.

I’ve found it has a decent population of people who understand what RP is and how to do it well, with few, if any, people who don’t quite get it.

Oh, and just an FYI: I am not abandoning Fortune Favors! Yes, I’ve been spending time on another server, but I’m not the only member who’s done that and returned.  I still log into a Trollbane character or two every day, and I spend a good deal of time logged into our Vent server just in case someone needs to get in touch with me.  This post is merely to let you know RP servers can be a fun diversion if you’re bored and want to try something different for a few hours.

And hey, if enough of us try it and like it, we could always start another chapter of the guild over there.  Just sayin’.

When I first started making the transition from “n00b” to something that was slightly less n00b-ish, a good meter seemed like the way to go.  Most of these addons measure a variety of stats besides how much punch is packed by each party member, but when the phrase “at the top of the meters” was uttered, damage was usually what they meant.

Then … I started raiding Karazhan.

That 10-player proving ground taught me a lot about how to play not only my own class, but also how other classes and roles should interract.  Oh, I’d known a lot already, but leveling to 70 was to college as end game raiding was to “entering the real world.”  You learn and learn and learn and then you find out just how much you didn’t know.

So… I scrapped my damage meter.  Here’s why:

Damage  meters ignore other abilities.  Sure, some will measure healing, but will they also measure damage absorbed by a priest’s bubble?  Attacks that just don’t happen because of a polymorph or sap?  Even on a good day, almost everything you do that doesn’t make your opponent’s health bar go down will make your ranking on the damage meter go down.

More damage means more threat.  Pretty simple, right?  There are ways to lower and raise your threat, of course, but I’ve seen more than one instance where a couple of players were so determined to top each other in damage done that the tank (a good tank, mind you) had a hard time keeping the mobs off of either of them.

There’s an addage I’ve heard a couple times playing WoW, and there’s truth in it.  “If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault.  If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault.  If the DPS dies, it’s their own fault.” The role of DPS is to do as much damage as possible without pulling mobs away from the tank.  The moment they do that they make the healer’s job that much harder (since most DPS don’t wear plate or have 16k+ hit points).

The additional heals needed force the healer to generate more threat, which makes the tank’s job harder as well.  This ends up being bad for everyone and has lead to more than one party wipe – but hey, at least you were “1st place” on the damage meter, right?  So what if you never downed the first boss in the instance?

With these problems, I feel obligated to point out one time when a damage meter actually came in handy.  It was a normal Kara run with a random druid brought in to help fill out our otherwise regularly scheduled members.  This balance spec druid seemed to have the idea that if he just coasted through he’d have a chance at some good drops with minimal effort.  Even unequipped his gear so it wouldn’t lose durability, which we didn’t catch right away since he was in moonkin form.

He was, in effect, a boomkin without the boom.  When we eventually caught on to his strategy his incredibly low rank in the damage meter (for a DPS spec) helped support our assertion that he should put some pants on or leave.  He left, we found a replacement, and moved on.

But I’m still not installing another damage meter.

OK, so I rolled a Death Knight.  File this one under “OMG Splat rolled an alt? That is so unlike him!  Really there is no sarcasm in this statement!”

*Ahem*

In any case, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned after leveling my DK from 55 to a whopping 58.

Going from level 55-58 is a joke.  It’s pretty useful lore-wise, but still.  I don’t know what I’m doing half the time with my DK, and I was still able to grind out those levels in rapid succession.  Maybe it’s comprable to how it is for everyone else, I don’t know.  I haven’t had any other alts hit those levels since the latest round of leveling nerfs.

Professions are tedious.  I went with Skinning & Mining (partially for the buffs but also to get mats for my other characters), and while being able to solo VC has greatly sped up my leveling, starting from scratch is still a pain.  I know, I know, DKs are handed so much other stuff the least we can do is level our own professions from scratch.  I just have to deal with it.

Did I mention DKs are friggin’ powerful?  Take a level 58 death knight who knows how to play that class and pit them up against most other level 58 classes and the DK should win.  Ignoring their anti-magic skills, their starting gear is pretty tough as well.

Tying in with that last one and my first comment, I don’t know what I’m doing.  When I’m healbotting it’s essentially a glorified game of whack-a-mole.  Health goes down, I heal.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  A little more to it than that, but that’s 75% of the job right there.  When I’m playing a DK, I’m essentially doing the same thing.  Only instead of waiting for health to drop I’m wating for runes to recharge.  Oh look, I can cast that again?  I think I will.

There’s a couple reasons for this, I think.

• I’ve only had this character for 4 levels, and I flew right through those.  I haven’t had the time to get a feel for the character yet.
• My skill at playing healer specs is compensated by my inability to play other specs well.

And last but certainly not least, Death Grip is fun.  I mean, VERY fun.  Before I could only do insane amounts of damage to random hapless woodland creatures.  Now, I can pull them over long distances to their doom!  It’s like going fishing for cows!  Fishing!  For cows!  (Or rabbits, skunks, deer, or whatever else I happen by.)  I know this is supposed to be one of many anti-caster spells in the DK’s arsenal, but I don’t care.

I doubt Vonsplat (original name there…) will end up being my main, but I’ll at least keep toying with him until his professions reach an appropriate level for Outland and I have to start showing some actual skill.

This train of thought started because I got my epic flying mount today.  The hula girl on the dashboard makes it go faster.  Really.

Hey, don’t laugh! At 95 gold that was far from the most expensive part of the whole ordeal.  I was grinding for weeks to get my riding lessons up to snuff!

And that’s exactly what it was.  Grinding.  Excruciating.  Running dailies I didn’t even like, treating the AH like it’s a stock market, all so I could squeeze out another few hundred gold per day … it wasn’t very fun for me.

Oh, the end reward is nice, don’t get be wrong, but for me it’s the journey that should be more important than the destination.  And to be blunt, this journey stunk.

World of Warcraft is a game, and unless I’m hired by Blizzard (doubtful, as I wouldn’t apply for a position in the first place) it should continue to be a game, right?  Right, and games were meant to be fun.

So here’s the problem – one person’s version of fun is not universal.  I’ve met plenty of people who absolutely lived for the end game content.  I’ve no doubt when the expansion hits they’ll be power-leveling to 80, in some cases even staying home from work to do so.

That’s not fun for me.  After I hit 70 my routine became a round of daily quests so I could afford what I needed to do twice weekly Kara raids, which would get me better gear so I could do more Kara raids.  Now, yes, there is a great sense of excitement whenever we down a particularly difficult boss, but there’s more to the game than dungeon crawls.

Fortunately there are enough people like me for Blizzard to consider us a target demographic.  World events and holidays add a bit of spice to my game time, allowing me to break up my grinding into smaller and more digestible bits.  (And let us not forget achievements, which make the game that much more fun to play!)

And even then I still feel compelled to roll a new alt, turn off all of my addons, crank the graphics all the way up, and bask in the glow of levels 1 through 20.  Maybe it’s just because Blizzard wants to immerse new players into the game as quickly as possible, but in my opinion the first bunch of levels are the most enjoyable lore-wise.

And that’s the key, isn’t it?  To enjoy the game?  We’re not paying Blizzard so we can work in the game, are we?

Look, we each play our own way, but when I find that what I’m doing isn’t fun any more, I’m going to stop and look for something that is fun.  It might be an achievement, soloing an instance, or maybe even spending a little time on an RP server.  I’ll always come back to my main because, let’s face it, paladins rock, but the moment I feel like WoW has become less than fun I need to either leave or change the rules by which I’ve been playing.

At least, that’s my opinion.  What’s yours?

(Image courtesy of WowWiki, since patch 3.0.2 broke my model viewer app.)

OK, the Ziggurats floating over capitol cities?  Those are cool.  The zones that fall “under attack” from level 70 mobs out in the middle of nowhere so the low level players don’t get a major smackdown handed to them?  Those are cool as well and (after an apparent fix revolving around the drop rate of the runestones) seem to be getting even better.

But giving players the ability to not only BECOME zombies but also infect everyone else?  Not as cool.

In fact, it stinks.

I recall that a while back there was an instance boss that could give players a contagious debuff that would cause them to lose life and then explode.  Players with this disease weren’t supposed to make it out of the instance alive, but players are resourceful.  They managed to find their way to the AH, Bank, Goldshire, or anywhere else that large numbers of players congregated.

Then they went boom and infected everyone.  Do a search and you’ll find a story or two about it – probably on Wired News.  I don’t have the time at the moment.

This was, of course, seen as a problem.  Blizzard fixed it so it couldn’t happen again, and there was much rejoicing.  (Yay.)

The zombie plague takes that glitch, shoves a bunch of steroids into it, clones it, then sets it lose on the world.  It’s darned annoying if I can’t go to Bank, AH, the FP of any city, or even TRY to play my lowbie alts because a few 70s with nothing better to do decided to turn Lakeshire into a retirement home for rotting corpses that want to retire you.

“Aw, QQ some more,” say the prepubescents that are taking time away from questioning each other’s sexuality on X-Box Live to kill my Daily quest givers.

Look, on a PvP server, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.  But we’re on Trollbane – a PvE server.  I don’t chose to play PvP usually because that’s not as fun for me.  I’m not saying PvP is bad per se, just that it isn’t my cup of tea.  If I’m doing a timed quest I don’t want to have to worry about someone coming through and delaying me.  If a level 70 challenges my level 22 to a duel and I don’t feel like getting one-shotted, I can ignore them.

But I can’t ignore the zombies, because even if they’re not flagged they end up infecting the NPCs around them.

The concept is kind of neat.  The implementation of it, however, is very, very flawed.