(WoW) Rambling Again
I've given tankadin "homework" before, and I don't know if those articles were ever read. Here's another concise one that's fairly up-to-date: http://honorscode.blogspot.com/2009/08/tankadin-101.html I've been following Honorshammer's blog since before I was introduced to Ferarro, and I generally find his insights and advice sound. I don't follow it 100%, but that's usually a matter of situational customization - which is to say tweaks I've made to Sashayla are based on doing 5-man heroic runs, usually with specific groups of people, rather than main tanking raids.
Before I get into long-windedness, are there any other requests for WoW "guides?"
I've ramble-ranted before, I'll probably do it again.
Disclaimer: Don't take any of this too personally/seriously. I'm not angry, I don't want to exclude people, I don't want to upset anyone.
That said, I've been finding myself thinking again about the guild and progress. I was numbers, take note of deaths, and marvel at the disparity between what I might call our first tier characters and second. I ran into this with my own just recently, finding my healing with Reyalyn was a little lacking for heroic Trial of the Champion (or at least that iteration of the bosses). I can do it, but through combination of gear level and lack of practice on my part, it's by no means easy. Compare that to when I'm tanking with Sash and Ajeya is healing - we can chain-pull groups straight into the second boss, and through the whole instance wiping really doesn't even enter my mind.
There may be some ego in this, but I think I'm good with my main. I am not perfect. I have zero experience with raid bosses. Sometimes, I flat-out make mistakes. But I know what I need to be doing in general and if I slip up, I'm usually aware of what I did wrong. In a single-boss fight, I rarely see anyone coming close to me on the threat meter (though there was this warlock this morning - OMG!). Certain situations might be "tough," but for me to truly be challenged, I think I'd have to move on to more challenging content, which would be 10-man raids.
We have a handful of people at that rough level of gear, though more have been boosted up some lately thanks to ToC runs. We have a (perhaps slightly smaller) handful of people who are that practiced. My first instinct is to say "skilled," but it's not like some innate gift, it's just a matter of doing what a role demands until it's readily familiar.
Then there are people who are less optimized in one or both. Real life comes first, so maybe they haven't been around as often. They miss out on drops. They miss out on practice. Perhaps they just are running in a role that isn't their primary There's lots of reasons, and they make perfect sense.
So then... There's people on, there's time in the day, and a dungeon can be run. You have six or seven guildmates online with level 80 characters. Who do you take?
1) You need a tank. We have maybe five in the guild, including one who "lacks gear," and a couple who (my perception) lack practice.
2) You need a healer. We have... three? One's my alt. One (again, my opinion) is hands-down better than the alternatives. This seems to be the hardest slot to fill for guild or PUGs these days. We (a global we) need more healers.
3) 3 people to fill DPS slots. Everyone else.
Okay, but who do you take? The role of healer is usually an easy option - if we have one in the guild on, we take them. Done. There simply aren't enough to have much overlap. Sometimes, there are options with tanks. Frequently, there are options with DPSers. So do you take the people who are farthest along, have been around the most, and are likely to output the highest numbers, making success easy? Or do you take the people who aren't as far along, thus would benefit most from the practice and drops, knowing that it may mean the run will take longer and involve more deaths? Mind you, even a party wipe doesn't bug me so much itself, but repeated deaths and runs that take over an hour instead of half that start to wear on moods.
I don't know if there is a right answer, per se. If there is, it's probably something like "it depends."
I would love to see our numbers and skill up to a point where we could start clearing 10-man raids. But I see two main obstacles (though I could have sworn I had a third in mind, it's gone now):
1) Simple scheduling. Getting 10 people on for a few hours doesn't happen very often randomly. By some agreement, it's probably doable, though.
2) Healers, OMG! Most content require a fairly precise number of healers. Unless I toss my main by the wayside for such activities, this means basically 100% participation from the other healers we have. And if they're under-geared/under-skilled, everyone suffers for it. Honestly, I suspect running with more than one healer in the group would be the source of our largest learning curve. It's a lot easier to effectively coordinate two tanks (you on the boss, you on the adds) than multiple healers.
In the meantime... I guess I keep hoping. I still want to help the guild as a whole progress. But it's hard. I cannot affect people's RL commitment. Even in-game, I'm often not sure what to do. How much advice is "advice" versus being "pushy?" I don't want to tell anyone how to play the game. On the other hand, I'd like to offer tips on how to be more effective in-game, but I can only really give such advice if it's wanted. If someone doesn't really care to improve, nothing I can say is likely to make a difference.
Before I get into long-windedness, are there any other requests for WoW "guides?"
I've ramble-ranted before, I'll probably do it again.
Disclaimer: Don't take any of this too personally/seriously. I'm not angry, I don't want to exclude people, I don't want to upset anyone.
That said, I've been finding myself thinking again about the guild and progress. I was numbers, take note of deaths, and marvel at the disparity between what I might call our first tier characters and second. I ran into this with my own just recently, finding my healing with Reyalyn was a little lacking for heroic Trial of the Champion (or at least that iteration of the bosses). I can do it, but through combination of gear level and lack of practice on my part, it's by no means easy. Compare that to when I'm tanking with Sash and Ajeya is healing - we can chain-pull groups straight into the second boss, and through the whole instance wiping really doesn't even enter my mind.
There may be some ego in this, but I think I'm good with my main. I am not perfect. I have zero experience with raid bosses. Sometimes, I flat-out make mistakes. But I know what I need to be doing in general and if I slip up, I'm usually aware of what I did wrong. In a single-boss fight, I rarely see anyone coming close to me on the threat meter (though there was this warlock this morning - OMG!). Certain situations might be "tough," but for me to truly be challenged, I think I'd have to move on to more challenging content, which would be 10-man raids.
We have a handful of people at that rough level of gear, though more have been boosted up some lately thanks to ToC runs. We have a (perhaps slightly smaller) handful of people who are that practiced. My first instinct is to say "skilled," but it's not like some innate gift, it's just a matter of doing what a role demands until it's readily familiar.
Then there are people who are less optimized in one or both. Real life comes first, so maybe they haven't been around as often. They miss out on drops. They miss out on practice. Perhaps they just are running in a role that isn't their primary There's lots of reasons, and they make perfect sense.
So then... There's people on, there's time in the day, and a dungeon can be run. You have six or seven guildmates online with level 80 characters. Who do you take?
1) You need a tank. We have maybe five in the guild, including one who "lacks gear," and a couple who (my perception) lack practice.
2) You need a healer. We have... three? One's my alt. One (again, my opinion) is hands-down better than the alternatives. This seems to be the hardest slot to fill for guild or PUGs these days. We (a global we) need more healers.
3) 3 people to fill DPS slots. Everyone else.
Okay, but who do you take? The role of healer is usually an easy option - if we have one in the guild on, we take them. Done. There simply aren't enough to have much overlap. Sometimes, there are options with tanks. Frequently, there are options with DPSers. So do you take the people who are farthest along, have been around the most, and are likely to output the highest numbers, making success easy? Or do you take the people who aren't as far along, thus would benefit most from the practice and drops, knowing that it may mean the run will take longer and involve more deaths? Mind you, even a party wipe doesn't bug me so much itself, but repeated deaths and runs that take over an hour instead of half that start to wear on moods.
I don't know if there is a right answer, per se. If there is, it's probably something like "it depends."
I would love to see our numbers and skill up to a point where we could start clearing 10-man raids. But I see two main obstacles (though I could have sworn I had a third in mind, it's gone now):
1) Simple scheduling. Getting 10 people on for a few hours doesn't happen very often randomly. By some agreement, it's probably doable, though.
2) Healers, OMG! Most content require a fairly precise number of healers. Unless I toss my main by the wayside for such activities, this means basically 100% participation from the other healers we have. And if they're under-geared/under-skilled, everyone suffers for it. Honestly, I suspect running with more than one healer in the group would be the source of our largest learning curve. It's a lot easier to effectively coordinate two tanks (you on the boss, you on the adds) than multiple healers.
In the meantime... I guess I keep hoping. I still want to help the guild as a whole progress. But it's hard. I cannot affect people's RL commitment. Even in-game, I'm often not sure what to do. How much advice is "advice" versus being "pushy?" I don't want to tell anyone how to play the game. On the other hand, I'd like to offer tips on how to be more effective in-game, but I can only really give such advice if it's wanted. If someone doesn't really care to improve, nothing I can say is likely to make a difference.
I think I generally share the same feelings as you. Coordinating two healers isn't too bad in a 10-man because, depending on the class, it's usually not a bad plan to break into two groups of tank, healer, 3 dps. The healer heals his tank and the dps in his group if needed. Another way to do it is one healer on main tank and the other on off tank and raid heals. Or one healer on both tanks (very doable for a paladin using Beacon of Light) and the other healer on raid heals. It kind of depends on the classes you have and their respective strengths and weaknesses. But anyway, back to the point of the post. The last few weeks I have little interest in grinding rep for titles, gathering mats for crafting, leveling alts, making money either through dailies or even the auction house. That part of the game, while it has interested me in the past, just isn't holding any appeal right now. And if I am bitching for a moment, I've come to mildly resent the fact that when I log on and want to do group content (and that's mainly what there is to do) it's AJ in the healing role. Not because I don't want to do it, but because I feel there's no option really. I know he didn't mean it spitefully, but Kyn's comment the other night underscored this when he mentioned he better level his pally up (for the purpose of healing, and because I've not been playing). I felt a little guilted for not logging on and no way to contact me - and by the way, you can always txt me or email that technothrakon account. If I'm busy I'll say so and I doubt you'd txt me at inappropriate hours. Yet, despite being guilted, I wasn't any more motivated to log on. As you said, we have few healers in the guild, and perhaps the realization is I'm overutilized because I'm geared about as good as you can without raiding gear and well-practiced that none of the content we do is particularly challenging to me. This is well-evidenced when we're going at our normal, fairly measured, pace I am popping out of tree to DPS because I'm just bored and want to see what else I can do. Anyway, I am really not trying to whine, I am just looking for something to excite me more about the game while enjoying it with y'all because I'm just not that fond of healing pug raids.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I really should have gone Holy as Sash's secondary spec. >.> At the time, it made more sense to set up Reya as my healer presence, but I find anytime I'm doing things with Reya I'm not doing things with my main, a mental strike against enjoyment. There might be irony in this considering I actually created Reya first with thoughts of eventually healing, but ended up playing Sash more and finding the tankadin mindset more fitting. I suppose doing anything over and over will get old, and that's the situation you're in. In a wider sense, I find myself wondering why healing seems like the least-favored role (though I may over-value tanking interest simply because I am one). Grim had said he'd heal with his off-spec, but ended up not. Tarken was going to heal with his off-spec, but now is probably going to switch to Ret. Shujin has said he looks to heal, but I wonder if that will last past hitting 80. Elly has a Restoration off-spec, but I don't think I've seen it used. Velnor heals, but seems to be missing some edge (which may be a simple matter of practice, due to not being on and healing much). It seems like over half our potential healers fall out of the role or simply aren't there. Maybe we need to start trying to do speed runs when you're on. Or make sure someone other than me tanks. Give you a little more to do anyway. >.> Anyway... I'll probably be sending a message sometime this weekend, at least. We'll see who's on when.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you remembered your third point, but I'd say probably DPS. Sometimes people are around 1k and while I realize some boss fights are suited to certain classes more than others, 1k is considered by the general raiding type as 'being carried' in a heroic and not really ready for a raid. I think 1500 is probably a good starting point for Naxx.
ReplyDeleteWorth noting, yes. I hate to quote exact numbers, because DPS fluctuates wildly depending on the encounter. And yet, it does matter. Lower DPS means longer fights, more taxing on resources (like the healer's mana), and really leads to runs dragging which is bad for morale. My general feel is someone putting out around 1k through a heroic run is either 1) very lacking in practice, 2) just starting to get heroic-geared, 3) out-of-spec, or 4) not trying. I consider 1.5k to be perfectly fine for regular heroic runs and 2k+ to be "good." Points one and two I have sympathy for to an extent. I'm usually willing to do sub-optimal stuff in order to help guildmates gear up and get practice. I do, however, expect to see improvement over time. The third... I'm not fond of. Sometimes that seems the only option for a guild-based run. Most often, I think we've seen it where I'm tanking because a second would-be tank in the group "isn't ready" yet, but doesn't have the spec/gear to step up as full DPS either. I'll do this, but it usually involves "easy" heroics (or earlier) that aren't much challenge - save that they take longer this way. I'm considering a full post regarding roles. Thankfully I see the fourth point more in PUGs.
ReplyDelete