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.
Most players choose their role based on what they want to do the most -- if you like playing as a ranged character, Hunter is probably a good choice, while being a Rogue will let you sneak around. But if playing in groups is your thing, says GoW, then you should aim for one of those roles that groups want: healer or tank. That's one reason I personally chose a resto Shaman -- everybody always needs a good healer and/or tank, and with a Shaman, I can fill that role, or go off and do my own thing as well.
GoW compares it to being a woman at an engineering school, where you've got your pick of the 1:6 girl/guy ratio (my alma mater, fortunately, had odds stacked slightly the other way). But other than the hot engineering sex, the point is a good one: if you're on a realm suffering from a lack of tanks and healers and you want to group up, why not fix things yourself and roll up one or the other?
NSDragon wants to know over on Livejournal: what's the best class to raid with on a low-end system (as in, one that gets only about 3-10 FPS during raid boss fights)? First of all, there's no reason you should be raiding with a system like that anyway -- even a cheap PC will run World of Warcraft better than that, and even if you can't afford a new computer, odds are that you can at least add some RAM in there and speed things up a bit. But let's assume that you're a great person and you've given all your money to charity, so there is no way that you can afford to buy anything faster.
In that case, as most of the commenters on the thread say, ranged DPS is probably your best bet. You won't be able to pour out as much aggro as someone who isn't lagging, but at least you'll be able to use your 3 frames per second to do some damage, and you're sure you won't draw aggro and wipe the raid. As for which ranged DPS class, though, I'm not sure -- Hunters have autofire, so you can be sure that you'll be pushing out DPS constantly. Mages aren't too hard to raid with (most Mages will actually tell you that they just press one button over and over again). Warlocks might be easier with their DoTs, but even that relies on timing in a way that Hunter DPS really doesn't. I'd say Hunter.
Some people are saying Healers, which I originally thought was a bad idea, but if you combine their recommendation of just looking at the floor (to speed up the FPS) and watching the healing meters, you might have something there. Wouldn't be very fun (whack-a-mole FTW), but you'd be helpful to the raid in situations where you wouldn't have to move around much. So healer might be a viable choice for a low-end computer user as well.
I chuckled the first time I heard Watchkeeper Gargolmar yell out, "Heal me! Quickly!" in Hellfire Ramparts. It reminded me of some players in PvP who don't keep their AddOns in check, emoting '<insert annoying player name> calls out for healing!' every time their health precipitates into killing blow range. Here's a tip: if you want to be healed in PvP, don't ask for it. Unless it's an Arena team and you're communicating your every move to your teammates, don't use emotes, don't yell, and don't rant in chat about not getting heals. If you do that, your chances of getting a heal drops considerably. I'll confess that I sometimes deliberately ignore players who have that emote automated. I mean, at least get creative about it, right? If the emote went something like, "<insert dying player's name> is about to die! He pathetically grovels for help! Healing would help him get back into the fray!" healers might consider healing you. Maybe.
Healers don't have it easy. They are the unsung heroes of Battlegrounds. They are the silent partners in Arenas. They are the players in the background that help make things work. If DPS classes are the stars, healers are the supporting act. In fact, if a healer is doing his job right, he shouldn't attract any attention at all. Instead, the only thing you're supposed to see is an invincible force of destruction -- usually *cough* an MS Warrior -- mashing faces with impunity. The best healers are almost invisible, healing from the sidelines, letting their allies do the dirty work and racking up the killing blows. And when they do get noticed, some healers can be pretty resilient themselves, being almost as difficult to take down -- if not more -- than their charges. Here are a few rules to mull over when dealing with healers in PvP.
This last one is particularly not cool in the case of healers, who tend to get the most unfair blame (whereas a rogue, for example, can just stealth about the map avoiding combat for the most part, and no one says anything). Too often I see one player, who inevitably thinks he really knows his WoW inside and out, berating the healer because of one mistake: "Why didn't you heal me? You suck! Get out of the BGs!" Seriously, battlegrounds have a lack of healers to begin with, and any healer willing to do sincerely his or her best is better than no healers at all. They have a lot of responsibility in PvP; the last thing they need is for their teammates to belittle them in front of everyone -- even if they really do need some improvement.
The whole idea of a team is that its members cooperate with one another, and cooperative language is generally a lot more productive in any case: "Hey, I appreciate your healing in here. Next time I'm carrying the flag, though, could you and I team up with you focusing on healing me in particular? Thanks!" Some people can't take any suggestion or advice whatsoever, but chances are that the healer actually wants to cooperate and help his or her team succeed. They just even be happy to accept a polite request. And if not, spewing all manner of insults just makes the insulter look like the bigger idiot anyway.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is all about your favorite meatshields. Matthew Rossi used to tank for people who called him that all the time, and honestly, he didn't like it all that much. He preferred 'Dislike Management Engineer', but folks are still gonna call you meatshield so you might as well get used to it.
After a burst of frenzied PvP activity to get the Gladiator's set, I've found myself in a cooling off period towards it. My wife and I are exploring the arenas on the Alliance side, but as for the Horde, I have to admit I haven't been PvPing much at all lately. So the other day I went ahead and respecced prot to get back to my roots as a tanking warrior. As arrogant as I am, I was still a little worried that I'd be rusty, but a quick trip into Heroic Sethekk convinced me that yes, Virginia, I still know how to tank. As i gear up to start tanking in ZA and maybe SSC (crossing my fingers) I wanted to talk about the other half of the equation of tanking. The first half is making sure you generate threat. After all, you're there to keep the mobs focused on you instead of the rest of the party.
The other half is in being hard to kill. You need to be as hard to kill as possible, because your healer has limits, and anything you can do to reduce incoming damage to a steady, manageable level is something you should do. In addition, anything you can do to make it so the healer has more health to work with is also something you should do. You must maintain threat, of course, or even the best healer can't prevent a wipe. But even if you're a genius at generating hate, if you only live for a few seconds once you have focus fire on you, then your healer is again unable to prevent a wipe.
I'm sure that sometimes, lag is certainly just an excuse if the player is embarrassed to admit they had made a mistake. With that being said though, depending on the situation a second or two of lag when healing can be devastating and as a result more easily noticeable that, at the very least "something undesirable happened".
A dps class lagging for a second or two, in most cases will go unnoticed.
Others have suggested that spamming keys to heal can cause you to disconnect, but that doesn't explain why players who spam attacks much more quickly than heals don't disconnect too.
Personally, I like player Viniculus's response:
Blaming lag is more polite than telling you "no, I'm not going to heal your pet."
I agree with Eyonix, but what do you think? Do you think healers lag more often than the rest of the group? Is it just more noticeable because people die? Or is it just being used as an excuse?
One of the many exciting changes announced at BlizzCon was that free Spell Damage would be added to healing gear. The purpose of the change is to make it easier for healers to enjoy the solo PvE content in the uber gear they have picked up in groups and raids. Too many healers change to lesser geared alts after raids are over, for example, instead of being able to quest in their +Healing epics.
It was confirmed last week that the change will occur in Patch 2.3 and the extra Spell Damage will equal 1/3 of the +Healing stat on gear. So, for example, an item with +75 Healing will have +25 Spell Damage added to it without reducing any other stats.
Some confusion has occurred, however, about just how generous Blizzard was going to be with the free Spell Damage. Forum poster Bridge requested a link to prove that "this includes enchants, gems and set bonuses".
Keen and Graev have a good post up about why (according to them) players prefer playing DPS roles. Statistically, it appears to be more or less true-- according to Warcraft Realms, four of the five highest class percentages are traditionally DPS classes: Mage, Rogue, Warlock, and Hunter. Warriors also have a higher population, but it could be argued that only 1/3 of the Warrior specs (Prot, as opposed to Arms or Fury) out there are actually meant for anything other than DPS.
So why do players seemingly prefer to play DPS? K&G give three main reasons. They cite something they call "Big Number Syndrome," which is the idea that unless you're dealing big damage, your class is worthless. They say that doing DPS requires less responsibility-- tanks and healers have to pay attention to everything, but DPSers choose a target and kill it. And they say that DPS classes level faster, which seems anecdotally (at least) to be true-- more damage means a faster kill, which means XP more often.
In general (very generally, in fact), I tend to agree. For these reasons, some people are definitely drawn to the DPS lifestyle. But I don't think that these reasons are why people chose these classes in the first place. Hunters, for example, have pets, and I think that's a much bigger draw to the class than "big number syndrome" ever was. And let's not forget that these are more or less the most archetypal classes in the game-- someone who's never played the game probably would immediately know what a "Mage" or "Rogue" could do, whereas a Shaman (the lowest class population, according to the census) is a little harder to explain.
So I think K&G are putting the chicken before the egg-- these things may be true about DPS looking back (and they may in fact be reasons people choose DPSers as alts). But when people first choose a class to call their own, I think it's a little simpler than that.
Gather 'round the screen, orcs and gnomes, it's time for another edition of Ask WoW Insider. Last week we debated the post powerful character in Warcraft, and this week we return to contemplating game mechanics with a question from Valyre, healing lead of the Ascent guild on Scarlet Crusade (H):
Is healing competitive? And should it be?
The fundamental mechanics of playing a dps class seem to encourage competition. Your target has an unlimited pool of health to act upon, so if you have the mana/rage/energy, you always have an outlet. Each ability you use to create damage stacks with the other fifteen people in the raid doing the same thing. You never hear "Your melee attack made my spell worthless." Some buffs will aid your party members, but for the most part it's individuals striving to do the most damage. And there are meters to chart your progress.
Healing mechanics tend to work against themselves. Your target may or may not have enough of a hp deficit at any given time for you to act on. Your abilities don't universally stack. If your heal tops off someone's health but beats out another healer's heal, you've just wasted their heal on a healthy person and threw their mana in the trash. To make things worse, "divide and conquer" assignments are more based on being able to heal through an encounter than to actually provide a level playing field for all healers. How many times do you see 3 healers on a tank that might take 30k damage, but 4 healers on the raid that takes well over 100k damage? At the end of the night, meters show love to the people with the highest damage assignments.
With this system, can you be competitive? Should you be competitive? If so, how?
What do you think, people -- are healers just as competitive as face-melters? How do you determine the "best" healer?
WTB your questions! Send us what you want to know and we just may publish it next week. Send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com.
Fridays are a time for early happy hour quiet contemplation and reflection upon the past, and in that spirit we're taking a look back at some of the best posts from over the lifespan of Ask WoW Insider. Now that we're all older and wiser -- who *did* end up being the top PvP classes at 70?
Top PvP classes at level 70 Just after Burning Crusade came out, we speculated on which classes would dominate in PvP. Were we right? Would you change the answer you gave then?
Best ways to make money in Burning Crusade "What are some good ways of making money for levels 60-70 in Burning Crusade? Are there people making money from jewelcrafting yet, should I pick that up? What about good mobs to grind or drops that sell well to vendors or on the AH?"
Best way to get instance invites "What are your tips and tricks for convincing a group you've got the goods despite not having seen the inside of the dungeon?"
Why are you overpowered? "Dig deep, self-examine and admit it: what makes your class overpowered?"
How's WoW performance on a Mac? "I play Wow on a PC, and am looking towards a new computer purchase. One thing that influences my purchase is how well WoW will run on my new computer. I'm leaning towards a Mac, but how well does WoW run on a Mac?"
Best way to power level alts "What's your strategy for the quickest power leveling? How do you maximize your time with your alts?"
Best healing class "Which class would you roll for a purely healing role? Which would you roll for a powerfully healing hybrid who might want to take on other roles from time to time? Relatedly, which healing class is the worst?"
Best DPS class "Which classes can dish out the most DPS and which ones make the least amount of DPS?"
Favorite WoW podcasts "There are a ton of WoW-themed podcasts out there now -- which would you recommend? What are your favorites?"
Great ding stories "Any fun or interesting stories to tell about hitting the level cap? Or more generally, any memorable or unusual dings at any level?"
We see that look in your eye, and we know it means you want to send us questions. Ask WoW Insider needs 'em -- send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com!
This post at Blessing of Kings makes a simple argument: BC raids are too healer-intensive. The standard Karazhan composition is three healers, two tanks, and five DPS, which makes 30% healers. The typical 5-man, on the other hand, is one healer, one tank, and three DPS, or 20% healers. Basically that means healers are suddenly more in demand once raiding starts, and that's a problem, because there's always a healer shortage. BoK argues that this composition requirement -- 30% healers -- extends into larger BC raids, and that encounters should be made less healing-intensive because healers are hard to find. What do you think?
As a side note, it's interesting to look at heroics with regard to group composition. I would argue that heroics, like raids, work best with 30% of the group being healers, which translates into one full-time healer and one off-healer (ideally a shaman, in my opinion). This agrees with my overall impression that heroics are more like five-man raids than anything else.
The pulling one is an especially good tip-- decide at the beginning of the run who's going to pull, and then only have that person pull. Can't tell you how many times, someone decided to just pull with an instant spell because they felt like it, and not realizing that another pull was already incoming. And I think the "not wear thy gear in vain" tip is an interesting one, too-- you should putting gems and enchantments on your gear already, just to make your character the best it can be. Seeing it as a way of benefiting the group is a new way of looking at it, but it's true as well.
If everyone followed these tips all the time (and even the best tanks I know sometimes forget to wait for mana), we'd all have better groups, whether they be PuGs, good friends, or raids.
Maybe it's just because Karazhan is full of undead, but it seems like healers are in dire need by guilds these days-- used to be that tanks were hard to find, but now almost everybody needs more healers-- holy Priests and Pallies, and resto Shamans and Druids. If you can cast a healing spell, we need you!
Guildwatch is your weekly look at drama, downed, and recruiting notices from all over the realms, in both the US and the EU. For this week's glance at guild turmoil and triumph, hit the link below. And to send your own info in, just drop a line to wowguildwatch@gmail.com!
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran.
This it the last in a series of features talking about How To Group With A Druid. I've already covered bear tanks, cat druids and Moonkin. Today, I will be exploring what Restoration druids bring to a 5 man group as well as what they don't do. If you feel I've left out any important points, be sure to leave a comment below! We love comments like healers love aggro control.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A RESTORATION DRUID
HEALING: Druids are built to be solid healers in both regular and heroic 5 man instances. They don't have to drop 40+ talent points to be good at it. Don't be surprised if you're druid healer is actually specced 31 points in Balance and 30 points in Restoration. That's more than enough for them to get you through alive.
On the other hand, don't be screaming for healing non-stop if you are not the main tank. It's your job to control your aggro, not the healers job to blow half his mana on non-tanks. I understand mistakes happen, wandering mobs appear out of nowhere, the MT gets overwhelmed and loses control of an add or two. But if the healer is dumping more healing on you than the MT for every encounter, you need to scale back your dps or talk to your tank about their taunt tactics.
Why wouldn't you want to have hot engineer sex? That's the point made over at "Groups of Words" in 
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