.jpg)
Sorry that I've not written more. The big reason is that I've started a new job, and my time is much more limited than it was in the past. The secondary reason is that...well, there's not been a ton of things I want to write about.
A lot of the questions I've been receiving recently have to do with some of the new changes coming in 3.0.8 for druids, and I think I'll do a summary in a bit to catch people up. I'll also do an update to the Bear/Cat FAQs. The gear lists are largely correct (Polearms are not listed on bears, but they all suck anyway). If there are specific bits of info that people would like, this would be a good time to put in a request. :) I'd also like to share how our raiding guild works a bit, but that may take a bit more time.
On a personal anecdote, one of the most embarrassing things I've ever done in WoW happened the other night. We were doing a 10-man Naxx, and I'm bored. We have 3 healers available but we also had quite a few newer players, so I went with two healers to try and get as many people chances at gear as possible. I also went cat, because I wanted to try my hand at DPS. (short answer: it's HARD).
On Faerlina, we're doing it with me tanking the adds, the other tank on the boss. We had planned on doing it with the enrage up. I switch my gear using ItemRack from DPS to Tank. This is the first time I've ever tanked the adds, but I'm finding that it's really hard for me to pull the adds off of the main tank; my swipe is only hitting for 200 or so, my threat is horrible. It takes quite a few mangles per add to pull it off. In addition, I'm taking a lot of damage - I'm getting the low health warning all the time. My base health is ridiculously low. Our tank dies on the second enrage, I pick up Faerlina and die almost immediately. Wipe city. One of the healers asks on vent "Why does Felhoof have 14k health?".
Our MT immediately replies "debuffs".
I release and go to repair..and my repair cost is miniscule. And...I'm naked.
Seems that in itemrack, I had made another option for a gear switch. The 'naked' gear switch (for wipes and experimenting with jumping off of big-ass cliffs - and Oculus, if you've ever done that) And...I cloned it from my tanking gear choice, which meant that it had the exact same icon that my tanking set had. So...I just tanked a bunch of crap totally nude.
My wife, upon hearing this, laughed for about 5 minutes straight. The MT was similarly amused.
Debuffs indeed. More like buff.
I'm really, really tempted to see how much I can tank naked now. Naxx is probably a bit out of reach, but a normal 80 instance should be doable. Probably a heroic too, if I used CC.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
22 comments:
There's a test - try tanking the Tribunal of Ages event in HoS naked. With an all clothie party, so that you can't cheese it by having a dps pally/warrior/dk do most of the heavy lifting.
2 comments.
Talking tanking, yeah the polearms are crap, but for dps I prefer Black Ice over any other, just because it has Hit which I really miss
Secondly you have the pull all wrong at that boss. The offtank (you) does the initial pull, 2 swipes and you got steady agro on all.
Whenever the MT is ready he/she simply taunts the boss off of you. If the MT is a paladin who, until the patch comes, have only a 3-mob like "taunt" ability, the paladin is the offtank and you are the maintank.
No fight for agro at all ;)
Anyone who overagro's your swipe deserves to die because of stupidity ;)
Melthu - that'd be an awesome test. I doubt I could do it on heroic, but normal is probably doable. That'd be crazy fun!
Marino - I think you missed the part where I was naked. Ya know, totally without gear. The fact that I could pull off of the other tank at all without gear is more telling to me. :)
Interestingly, the problem I generally have with Faerlina's cronies is that I almost do too much damage to them too quickly.
But yeah, if it makes you feel any better, the first night I went into OS, I AOE taunted the elementals. You can imagine my surprise when I ended up pulling Sartharion over as well. The encounter is easy enough that it still went swimmingly, but it was pretty embarrassing.
This whole "nearly everything can be taunted" phenomenon is fantastic.
Hey Runy -
Yeah, the AoE taunt thing happens...a lot. A lot more than I expect it to. It's happened a few times on Sarth now. Amusingly it's not happened when I did it; it's always been another tank. It's not that much of a problem assuming your growl doesn't resist...
It's funny how Marino and Runycat _COMPLETELY_ failed to get the point by your post. I'm sorry for being rude but I very much dislike people like you two.
There's a saying "think before you speak" - apply it to forums aswell.
hey welcome back, missed your posts.
That's too funny. Ah what a blast. I love this game :)
Would love to know how polearms shape up for cats, with malygos kills happening in the near future.
Would also love to know how your run your guild. Our biggest issues are with players, not classes, specs or gear. I've asked about this before. Need other people's experiences badly. I'm at a point where I'm considering server transfer just so I can play in a skilled guild. Our guild is one of the top ones, but we're a new server; we just dont have vet players.
Anon, I think Runy got the point perfectly. :) That'd be another good post though. Asking what stupid things people have done while tanking. I've tanked with my fishing pole before (Oh HAI, Lurker!) but I'd never actually tanked without any gear whatsoever. Heh.
I once tanked a heroic using a fishing rod by accident! 2 bosses in before I realized, since I didnt notice anything different. I guess it was a bit of a giggle. But mainly I'm levelling alts now (a prot warrior yeah!) so I can try tanking the instances all over again. I'm a little playing my druid outside of our 25 man runs.
@Anon
The great thing about blogging is that, so long as you're not reacting incorrectly to a technical portion of a piece, you can choose to respectfully address any particular aspect of said article. Did you forget that?
Try to avoid sweeping generalizations and reassess your understanding of multiple interpretations. In the future, it's also cool to point out where people are "wrong" before making such strong statements.
Besides, if I'm boring Kal with personal anecdotes, I'm sure he'd let me know.
Random offshoot: I'm about ready for the 3.0.8 to come in. I'm getting pretty close to capping my pre-raid gear for both tank and DPS while having no raid gear, so it's kind of odd.
It was funny -- when the full impact of the 3.0.8 changes were explained, I did the math and figured I'd get about 300 armor from the changes, which I'd then hand right back as I replaced a trinket and a ring or something.
Since then, I picked up the Enraged Feral Staff and the Keystone Great Ring, plus I'm having the Titanium Earthguard Chain made by my JC friend tomorrow when he'll get the recipe, so I was figuring I'd probably be now losing armor.
I hadn't appropriately accounted for the fact that since that time, I'd gotten either epics or iLvl 200 blues in mass amounts from my heroics/crafting/badges. I took a peek today and I'll now be gaining around 3500 armor, from 32k to 35.5k unbuffed.
Since I'm a bigtime armor ho, I can't see how this is a nerf except in the limited cases of the trinkets they told us before 3.0 were going to be indirectly nerfed anyway.
Would also love to know how your run your guild. Our biggest issues are with players, not classes, specs or gear. I've asked about this before. Need other people's experiences badly. I'm at a point where I'm considering server transfer just so I can play in a skilled guild. Our guild is one of the top ones, but we're a new server; we just dont have vet players.
His guild is filled with terribad scrubs. Its true I read it on the realm forums. Don't even get me started on his GM. That guy is so bad he just Leroys Hadronox for no reason at all.
@Runycat
"Interestingly, the problem I generally have with Faerlina's cronies is that I almost do too much damage to them too quickly."
I mean.....WHAT????
He said he was naked, why even make statement like that. I'm sorry but it's just retarded.
@Anon
Yes, he was naked. Thus, since I normally do a little "too" much damage on the adds, if I had succumbed to a similar Outfitter mishap, I likely would have suspected a screw up immediately. At least, I'd hope so. Follow now?
Race - you're just making me even more jealous of your server and guild. You dont know what its like in real scrub land... oh no you dont... you cant believe the pain I suffer as we wipe on thaddius.... yet again.
I'm astounded at the animosity this post of all things has produced. Seriously. People are yelling at other people in a post about me accidentally tanking Naxx nekkid? For real?
Since I'm a bigtime armor ho, I can't see how this is a nerf except in the limited cases of the trinkets they told us before 3.0 were going to be indirectly nerfed anyway.
Hey, Haunau -
It's exactly a nerf in those limited cases (and possibly in the case where you're otherwise epicced out). However, in those cases it's a pretty substantial nerf. It doesn't even really take that much, honestly; all you need is to have Defender's Code, and boom! Nerf city.
I'm not that bothered by it any more, honestly. I think more nerfs to both cats and bears are coming. Cats are probably next; their being at the top of melee DPS single target post HaT nerf is going to be looked at. Bears having close to 60K health will also, even if it's with stupid gear.
Race - hah! Yeah, that was pro. "OH HAI, Hadronox! I hear that you eat spiders! I will stop your spider eating!"
"Uh, Race...what are you doing?"
"I got an aggro warning so I figured that you had pulled."
(rest of the party, including me, is sitting back at the top of Hadronox's area and decidedly NOT attacking the boss)
"Hmm...wonder if he can solo that"
(about 30 seconds later and a nearly oom healer)
"Nope, guess he can't".
Finally got the essence of Gossamer out of it, so that made it all worthwhile. :)
Anon4 - wiping on Thaddius happens. It usually happens the first time someone new tries it. I've found the best way to fix it is to treat each Thaddius like it's the first. Always announce polarity shifts. Always tell people to shift. It sounds retarded, but repetition of simple things helps. A lot.
No Kalon, re thaddius. It doesnt help. It never helps. Will it ever help? I dont know. It hasnt so far.
That in a nutshell is why I'm looking at server transfers, and that's why I want to know how you run your guild or organize raids from a player perspective. Do you know what its like to play with players who will NEVER follow instructions, no matter how many times they've done it, or no matter how clearly those instructions are enunciated on vent, every 20 seconds, for the duration of every wipe attempt, every week......??? Do you know how that makes you feel about future harder content, and your likely progression through there? To know that your progression as a guild is hampered severely by those players. Sure, you could just not invite them to raids as long as you dont mind 16-manning the place.
Hah - if I sound bitter, its because I am and I'm deperate :P
@Kalon Re: Cat nerf
Are cats really doing the highest single target melee dps (outside of HaT bugged rogues)? I knew the kitties among us were doing well for themselves, but I didn't realize they were doing that well.
If Blizz does decide that we need to be nerfed I wonder if they'll do something like lower our maximum theoretical dps (i.e. Patchwerk dps) but make the rotation easier to keep up. Right now there is a wide gulf in cat dps between players who can keep up the rotation and those who can't. It strikes me as a similar situation to death knight tanks: those who are able to rotate their cooldowns effectively are boarderline OP, but those who cannot are the squishiest tanks out there. As a result their cooldowns are getting nerfed but their passive mitigation/avoidance is getting buffed, which should narrow the gap between good and bad players.
I'd be disappointed if that were the case. I was a full time tank in my old guild and only got to dps a small handful of times in 10 mans, and only once in a 25 man fight (our Thaddius guild first, and even then I think our raid leader thought I was main tanking rather than the pally). Those couples times, though, were very fun. Keeping up a solid dps rotation as cat is very demanding, and also very rewarding. It's fun to push yourself, especially when the price for making a mistake is so high since the cat rotation is so delicate.
I dunno, I guess from my perspective, the Defender's Code guys have been living on borrowed time all along. We were told before it even went live more or less what would happen. It's like enjoying the fruits of a minor acknowledged bug before it gets fixed.
Anyway, no patch again today. Arrrgh. If nothing else, I'd like to just get it in and done with. They're excused if they use the extra week to shoehorn in an actual tanking idol for 25 badges or something.
Grats on the new job, hope everything goes well.
Either way the game has become really boring so I can't expect you to have much to write about, lol. I still have some stuff to do in the game, but I'm in a fairly casual guild. We only were raiding 25 mans once a week until this week (now two times a week) and still have to get Sartharion with 2/3 drakes up. But for a group like us to fly through content must bore the hell out of more focused guilds.
Oh geez, lookit what you did.
I'm going to have to tell my guild it's all your fault when I start running around tanking in 'debuff' just for the hilarity.
Omg that needs to be an achievement.
Kalon has earned the achievement [De Buff]
Successfully tank without any gear on.
That in a nutshell is why I'm looking at server transfers, and that's why I want to know how you run your guild or organize raids from a player perspective. Do you know what its like to play with players who will NEVER follow instructions, no matter how many times they've done it, or no matter how clearly those instructions are enunciated on vent, every 20 seconds, for the duration of every wipe attempt, every week......??? Do you know how that makes you feel about future harder content, and your likely progression through there? To know that your progression as a guild is hampered severely by those players. Sure, you could just not invite them to raids as long as you dont mind 16-manning the place.
Hah - if I sound bitter, its because I am and I'm deperate :P
There are really two elements in dealing with issues like this. One is the guild leadership, and the other is rest of the members. The officers need to be willing to deal with the people causing the problems. Why they do depends on a lot. Mistakes happen. Bears tank w/o gear, GM's ninja pull bosses, Raid leader's taunt the boss off of the MT. The key is to not repeat the some mistakes.
Is it the same player(s) screwing up everytime? If so is it because they dont know what to do, they don't listen, or simply arent good enough. Some people just are not able to not stand in stuff. They focus on their grid or their bars, the boss, or whatever, and simply don't pay enough attenion to everything else going on.
The first issue can be dealt with easily. Explain the mechanic of the fight to them again, make them do their homework. If they refuse to listen then its tougher. If they just can't handle it, there isnt much you can do. In cases like the last two you just need to not bring them. If you need to bring those types of players due to numbers, then you need to recruit and replace them. Its not always an easy decision to make, but unless you can carry them, it has to be done. Maybe it means you have to step back to 10 mans until you get enough capable players.
Honeslty very few guilds have 25 players who maximize their potential there are always going to be some players who are better than others. Personally as long as I know people are putting in the effort to gear up properly, gemming and enchanting, bringing consumables, etc, then if they dont top the dps meters, or arent the best healers or dont always generate the most threat thats ok. Its the people who dont listen, dont put in the work, and dont try to improve that drive me nuts, and I'd rather not bring them on a raid.
Post a Comment