Recently a bunch of the writers here were talking about all the changes we're seeing to various hybrid DPS specs. Retribution in the beta is known to bring some serious pain, cat DPS has been given some pretty sweet buffs, and Shamans...well, Shamans seem to be in a state of flux, but when is that not true? With tank AoE threat buffed, the need for crowd control may also be a thing of the past, thus eliminating one of the more annoying roadblocks to hybrid desirability in 5-man groups. For 5-mans, at least, hybrid DPS should encounter significantly less difficulty (we hope) getting a slot.
However, it was my contention that, for the purpose of raiding, it doesn't ultimately matter how much these specs get buffed. They could do amazing DPS, bring incredible buffs, have any number of raid-saving abilities, and fart gold on every crit -- but you're still not going to see a lot of hybrid DPS running around Wrath raids for one very simple reason: someone has to tank and heal, and neither job is sufficiently attractive to allowmost hybrid players to come as DPS. When it's a choice between respeccing resto or the raid never getting off the ground, most players will respec resto -- and decisions like that tend to be fairly hard to escape. The next night rolls around and -- um, do you mind coming as resto again?
We had a little bit of controversy in the first installment, so I'm just going to state this as baldly as possible; if you hated what I wrote last time, there's a good chance you'll walk away from this one thinking I eat babies. Delicious, delicious babies. While I never mean to offend people, I reserve the right to tell them the truth, or at the very least a highly entertaining and plausible lie.
Truth, she be at times an ugly mistress. And she ain't gettin' any prettier as we move from DPS to tanking.
Tanks have significantly more responsibility, both in groups and raids, and they face the competing directives of maximizing mitigation (to keep their healers happy) and maximizing threat production (to keep their DPS happy). I've healed dozens of Death Knight tanks at this point, and while the average pugged DK tank has gotten noticeably better, there are still a few trends you'd want to be aware of as a healer. The problems in beta right now are made worse by Blizzard unintentionally overselling the ease of tanking on a Death Knight in 5-man runs. Many people seem to have interpreted the statement that they should be able to tank well with Blood, Frost, or Unholy specs as being tantamount to saying they can tank well regardless of how their talent points are spent in those trees.
Any experienced tank can tell you right now that this is not true, but people believing that it is is how you wind up with 11K-life Death Knights taking 7-8K enraged hits from Keristasza in the Nexus. If you've never tanked before but you're interested in tanking on a Death Knight -- or pragmatic enough to know you'll probably wind up tanking a certain number of 5-mans on your DPS Death Knight -- I hope this article helps you avoid what I went through in May 2007 when I started tanking and sucked at it.
I came to the beta to slowly lose my mind trying to heal insane tank damage and gulp Extra Strength Tylenol. And I'm all out of Extra Strength Tylenol.
I specced resto in the beta the other week to try out the new talents and abilities Druids are getting in Wrath, and decided to brave the horrors of LFG and scribble some notes for your sake, dear readers. By the way, the aspect of beta that I will miss most? The 1 copper respec fee. Can we keep this?
Please note that this is written from the perspective of a 70 Restoration Druid, so unfortunately I can't comment on whether Priests, Shamans, or Paladins might have had an easier or harder time healing the instances. I have a good but not jaw-dropping resto set, and on the live realms clock in around +1998 to +2100 healing unbuffed. If your gear's better or worse, then just adjust the potential difficulty level as needed. And even if you're not a healer, you still might find something useful here:
Like any other form of PvP, you either love dueling or you hate it.Dueling is a great way to learn how to maximize abilities and test combos and macros.There are very few established guidelines for how to appropriate ly duel.Borkovic of Caelestraz asked in the official forums if it is acceptable to heal in a duel.Fliara of Terenas stated that protocols vary depending on server and faction, and suggested that rules should be established beforehand.
The first response, by Mlcho of Kirin Tor who takes an "all's fair in love and Warcraft" approach, was met with considerable agreement throughout the thread:
Use everything in your power to produce a win. Who cares if you use a pot? Who cares if you bandage? If they whine, it's because they weren't prepared.
I remember the day that patch 2.3 was released.I got out of work atsix PM as was stoked to get home and try some of the glorious improvements.I had a 25 minute commute then, north on I-15 right past the Las Vegas Strip.Usually by six most of the traffic had cleared and it was pretty smooth sailing- except that day.Some genius decided that it was a good idea to reduce the four-lane freeway to one.My left leg aching from working the clutch and blood pressure rising from impatience and a bit of road rage, it took me about an hour and a half to get home.I should be used to pushback though; I play a caster in WoW.
Debigmacca of Aman'Thul believes that Wrath would be a good time to do away with spell pushback.His argument is based on the number of stuns, fears, and assorted other of immobilization effects that abound in the current state of the game.There was some agreement with the original poster that spell pushback is unnecessary as casters often quickly fall prey to melee DPS.There's only so much a trinket can do.
I'm getting back to WoW Insider after a month's real-life-related absence and have been spending some time playing catch-up on the site. One of the articles that caught my attention was Matt Rossi's popular "One reason tanks won't PuG," in no small part because I play a tank and my own PuG runs have been few and far between of late. My main, a Tauren Druid, respecced from balance to feral at level 69 because there were so few tanks on my server, and I literally spent months and months tanking PuG's to get experience and gear.
During that period I saw everything from rogues rolling on +healing maces to warlocks needing on tanking cloaks, and I learned that you never can tell what you're going to get from a PuG. Yes, you'll get hunters who can't trap, mages who never resheep, rogues who mistakenly believe they leveled a warrior, and priests who Power Word: Shield you straight off the pull -- but you'll also find people who know their class well, or are in the process of learning just like you are, and who are fun to be around. I have now killed Illidan with a contingent of people who showed up to my PuG's back when I was a wee lolbaretank in quest greens and Heavy Clefthoof, so as a matter of personal experience I think PuG's are a somewhat underrated way to meet people who will later turn out to play crucial roles in how you experience the game.
I don't PuG as frequently anymore due to time constraints and increased time spent leveling alts, but I still hang out in LFG from time to time for the pure enjoyment of meeting new people. Yes, it is often difficult to PuG tanks and healers (I would submit, as someone who typically tanks or heals in dungeons, that it is also difficult to PuG skilled DPS), but a lot of people could make it easier on themselves than they do. If you're having problems finding a tank or healer for your PuG's, try these.
It is not unusual for younger or less experienced players to approach me with questions on my PvP experience.
"Allie," they ask. "How can we avoid sucking like you?"
"Well, first it helps to have a functional mouse," I always say, favoring them with a benevolent smile whilst swirling a fine glass of port. "Click-to-move is usually impossible when neither your right mouse button nor scroll wheel actually work. You'd be amazed at the number of problems you can pin on your refusal to replace a relatively cheap piece of equipment. Never, ever, get rid of Mr. Gimpy if you want a ready excuse for being a keyboard turner."
They scribble this and then look at me reverently, hopeful for any additional pearls of wisdom I might drop. However, after receiving so many queries and accidentally mistelling most of them with, "I can tank, but gimme a sec to get rid of this punk who's bugging me," I have decided, in the spirit of all gifted Machiavellians, to preserve my bad advice in a medium more lasting than /w.
For beyond faulty mice, children, we get into more advanced and underhanded PvP tactics...
In the last two weeks we've discussed where to go for an instance and what to do once you get there.Since dungeon runs usually require five members, this week we'll talk about how to find people to go with you.Remember that the typical instance group is made up of a tank, a healer, and three DPS members.It's not always easy to find people that match those requirements.
Since there is a shortage of tanks, it's probably easiest for tank classes to find a group.That also means it's hardest if you are not a tank to find someone to play that role.The next most difficult is a healer.There's usually plenty of DPS to go around.It can take some time to make a group, but since dungeons provide excellent loot and good experience it's usually worthwhile to stick with it.
For many, the role of the Healer is something to be avoided all together. For the few, however, healing is a meaningful, rewarding and challenging job, albeit an often-thankless one. Being a healer also tends to make one a popular player. This popularity can wane at higher levels if you don't pick up on a crucial principle: your job is more than just healing. Depending on your class, you will have other duties that include keeping buffs on your companions, de-cursing them, stepping in front of the mage if he or she draws aggro and the list goes on. Addons are one way that the aspiring healer can shift some focus towards his or her other duties. By taking some of the busy work out of casting healing spells, buffs and keeping the party free of curses, poisons and/or diseases, programs like Healbot Continued can take you from being a good healer to being a stellar and indispensable member of any group.
Healbot Continued uses the embedded Lua scripting language to reconfigure information vital to healers. This retrofitting presents an easily manageable interface that helps you maintain a greater degree of situational awareness. For many of you wondering how this works, it's simply a matter of our program, Healbot Continued in this case, listening to the World of Warcraft client for events. In combat, information is literally flying back and forth between the player (client side) and the game server (server side). Healbot Continued simply listens in and picks out information it wants. This is true of almost all addons, which sift through event information for a variety of purposes. Healbot Continued is easily one of the more powerful addons around, as it goes above and beyond what is normally expected of healing addons.
While I say "spell damage," this is more often an issue you'll see in healing rather than damage dealing. What am I talking about, you ask? Down-ranking spells. Most healers who have hit the end-game understand that, with massive amounts of +healing on their gear, they can use lesser ranked healing spells to heal the necessary amount with a low mana cost -- giving great mana efficiency. (Damage dealers, alternatively, tend to stick to their max rank spells for best damage output.)
However, in the Burning Crusade, all this will be changing: spell damage and healing will be applied differently to lower level spells than max rank ones. The standard +damage and healing bonus will be multiplied by ((spell level) + 6)/(player level). (Based on the explanation given, I assume that the spell level is the level you get the next rank spell, but read into it what you will.) There's already outcry amongst the healing classes, who say that downranking is necessary to conserve mana throughout some of the game's long boss encounters -- and that this change will simply force them to use mana potions every time the 2 minute cooldown is up. I, however, am trying to reserve apocalyptic judgments until we've gotten a better feel for how this change will play with expansion encounters.
Like any other form of PvP, you either love dueling or you hate it.
I remember the day that patch 2.3 was released.
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