In this month's UK PC Gamer there'a a large article about WotLK. In it are a series of developer interviews. In one, this question in Tom Chilton's interview caught my eye:
Q) What were your first principles of producing the Death Knight, and what did you want it to be?
A) Right Now, one of the most limiting factors when people try and form a group is not having a tank. We think that increasing the number of players who have a character capable of tanking, we'll improve on that problem. Plus, it really fits the theme of the expansion very well.
Now i'm sorry, call me a miserable, pessimistic old bastard if you want but how many people do you thuink will choose tanking of any sort over either of the two DPS trees available. Especially when one involves raising the motherfucking dead back to life to fight for you!
The fucking issue here is NOT that there aren't enough tanks, it's that tanking is a miserable, shitty experience of fighting your own fucking PARTY more than the mobs! And those that don't suffer from that problem aren't going to stick around in 5-mans for long. They'll be waltzing off to bloody raid and burn out there.
Essentially the problem is a lack of tanks staying in the 5-man (heroic or otherwise) area. And for every 1 tank and healer being re/rolled, you get about 10 'loldps!' mouthbreathers/burned out tanks!
tl:dr: Fuck Blizzard and their out-of-touch attitude to WoW. Stupid pissants should ask real fucking players what the situation really is.
P.S. sorry for the rant but i've been burned on both sides of the issue (burnt out tank and healer with tankless groups) and am thouroughly sick of the crap.
In this month's UK PC Gamer there'a a large article about WotLK. In it are a series of developer interviews. In one, this question in Tom Chilton's interview caught my eye:
Q) What were your first principles of producing the Death Knight, and what did you want it to be?
A) Right Now, one of the most limiting factors when people try and form a group is not having a tank. We think that increasing the number of players who have a character capable of tanking, we'll improve on that problem. Plus, it really fits the theme of the expansion very well.
Now i'm sorry, call me a miserable, pessimistic old bastard if you want but how many people do you thuink will choose tanking of any sort over either of the two DPS trees available. Especially when one involves raising the motherfucking dead back to life to fight for you!
The fucking issue here is NOT that there aren't enough tanks, it's that tanking is a miserable, shitty experience of fighting your own fucking PARTY more than the mobs! And those that don't suffer from that problem aren't going to stick around in 5-mans for long. They'll be waltzing off to bloody raid and burn out there.
Essentially the problem is a lack of tanks staying in the 5-man (heroic or otherwise) area. And for every 1 tank and healer being re/rolled, you get about 10 'loldps!' mouthbreathers/burned out tanks!
tl:dr: Fuck Blizzard and their out-of-touch attitude to WoW. Stupid pissants should ask real fucking players what the situation really is.
P.S. sorry for the rant but i've been burned on both sides of the issue (burnt out tank and healer with tankless groups) and am thouroughly sick of the crap.
basically it sounds like there won't be one tank tree now... when I look at the leaked DK talents, I really don't see many geared toward tanking... it's hard to envision a tank with hardly any true tank talents tanking a high-end raid boss... but I guess we'll see how it works when we get there
"HOORAY! The Deathknight is an unprecdented success! Break out the champagne! There are 12 million subscribers in game, and 14 million deathknights on the servers! Dance everyone! Dance!"
"Errr... they have a tanking tree, right?"
"OF COURSE! That's part of why we introduced them! Didn't you get the memo?!"
"... then why are 13.5 million of them spec'd for damage. And because of re-rolls, actual 'tanks' per server are now down 30%."
"........ fuck me. SOMEONE GO FIND THE NERF STICK!"
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
thanks whenever we're in a raid and one of the commercials comes on someone's TV, they play it over vent and we all stop what we're doing and /dance to the catchy jingle.
while we're talking about milestones -- My druid went 3/4 on drops in ZA today and now has 2004 bonus heals......So hawt
planetes42 on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
Re: tank shortage
That. That, so hard. There is absolutely no shortage of tanks. At all.
But the reason people can't find tanks is because good tanks don't PuG, and bad tanks don't play their tank class for long.
People seem to constantly forget that tanking and healing has always been a thankless job in MMOs. The low-entry ceiling of WoW has just aggravated this point to the extreme.
Even if Blizzard found a way to make healing/tanking fun, the low-entry ceiling of the game will negate any benefits that may have when it comes to the average player.
Yeah, the problem with tanking/healing is that it's so much more stressful. It's harder in the sense that it's no fuckups allowed. In raids this is aggrevated by setting extra tank goals (movement/interrupts/timed taunts/pickups) and a huge threat requirement, while healers can't miss a beat in Sunwell or instantly wipe the raid (I healed Brutallus thursday, it's just not fun). Combined with the fact that grinding is a very common part of WoW at the moment (dailies are the fastest gold, gold buys a load of great gear, rep is still important for newer players), the relative crappyness of PuG's still (PuG'ing heroics is still almost always a guarantee for at least a 2h+ run, if not outright failure), no PvP for tankspec, tanks having by far the highest gear requirement for every level of play, and who is going to be a tank? You've got to be a goddamn masochist.
Healers fair a little better, they can at least PvP. But it still sucks smiting your daily mobs to death.
Am I that weird for liking to tank? I even played a tank exclusively in EQ before SoE put in any at-will threat generation and warriors were the forgotten bastard children of the tank world and enjoyed it.
Of course, if I'm in a pug and some retard can't handle his or her shit, I will instruct the healer to let him or her die. And laugh.
if the Wrath alpha leak info is true, a lot of core abilities from the warrior prot tree are becoming innate abilities in Wrath.
Defiance will be passive (they'll probably throw the 6 expertise onto another talent) and Shield Slam will be trainable. This lets virtually anyone be a decent 5-man tank, regardless of spec.
It also allows Blizzard to add more neat talents like the +15% crit on HS, Cleave, and T.Clap where Defiance is currently.
The more functional they make tanks without the requirement of a talent spec, the more tanks you will see.
CripTonic on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
people who like to tank are generally either born leaders, enjoy bossing people around, or masochists
That. That, so hard. There is absolutely no shortage of tanks. At all.
But the reason people can't find tanks is because good tanks don't PuG, and bad tanks don't play their tank class for long.
This, I think.
Also, something one of my (was prot, now ret pally) guildies posted on my guild's forums:
On the subject of non-raid tanking, as one of the ex-tanks that you can never find outside of raids, I'll tell you why; all the tanks busted their asses back when badges FIRST came out with their select favorite 3 DPS and healer, got their badge rewards, their rep, and all that jazz, and now get absolutely nothing out of running anything. Take a look at the badge rewards compared to the pieces we're wearing... we've either already GOT them or we have better outta raids. I personally have some 100-ish badges stockpiled to turn into epic gems, and that's just leftover from months ago when I ran heroics regularly while still prot.
The PUG tank issue is in part due to a design flaw in Blizzard's raiding structure, because as it stands, a 25-man raid really can't field more than 3 real tanks. That means 10 people can't find a tank for 5-mans without respeccing. It was even worse with the old pre-BC format when you had 4 tanks tops to 40 raiders; right outta kara, tanks were a dime a dozen, since you usually ran with a MT and OT for a 10-man group. This disparity in tank percentage-to-raider is the core of the problem... made significantly more obvious by tanks picking their favorite 'good' healers and DPS and avoiding instancing with anyone but their favorite group. Finding a good PUG tank is next to impossible, because any good tank is able to pick and choose his groups. I should know; I certainly did.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
if the Wrath alpha leak info is true, a lot of core abilities from the warrior prot tree are becoming innate abilities in Wrath.
Defiance will be passive (they'll probably throw the 6 expertise onto another talent) and Shield Slam will be trainable. This lets virtually anyone be a decent 5-man tank, regardless of spec.
omg yes
i have never seen these before, this is exciting!
# Sudden Death (new) - Your melee critical hits have a 10%/20/30% chance of allowing the use of Execute regardless of the target's health state.
that can't go through to live
way too good, even for 40 points deep in arms
# Challenging Shout cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.
yesssss
# Death Wish no longer grants fear immunity.
# Deathwish and Sweepingstrikes have once again switched places.
grumble grumble at the first one, a big olololol at the second
# Blood Craze now regenerates 2/4/6% of your health after being the victim of a critical strike.
# Bloodthirst now recoverd 1.5% of your max health per hit. Bloodthirst now has only one rank.
man, they are going to need a badass 51 point talent in arms to make me not go 37/31/3
people who like to tank are generally either born leaders, enjoy bossing people around, or masochists
i like to think i'm number two
I'm a fourth type: the trusted sidekick next to the born leader that tanks whatever I get pointed at, and do it very well. I'm just not good at leading myself.
Echo on
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
Gift of the Earthmother (new) - Reduces the global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 sec, and causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 1/2/3/4/5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target.
Improved Divine Spirit - Changed to 3/6% (down from 5/10%).
Boooo
Divine Hymn (level 70, instant, 750 mana, 10m cooldown) - "You recite a holy hymn, granting your party protection from attackers. Any attacks done to you or your party will cause the attacker to be afflicted by sleep for 20 sec. Divine Hymn will last 10 sec."
nerf inevitable
However, it looks like a deep Disc healing spec will be more viable, so I'm extremely interested in that.
EDIT: But yeah, this will all be different slightly by the time it launches, I'm not actually hoping for anything besides a Frost Wyrm flyer.
people who like to tank are generally either born leaders, enjoy bossing people around, or masochists
i like to think i'm number two
I'm a fourth type: the trusted sidekick next to the born leader that tanks whatever I get pointed at, and do it very well. I'm just not good at leading myself.
I'd say I'm part three and part four, mostly three.
I've leveled tons of characters from like 1-40, a few (I think 4) 1-60, and it's rarely bothered me.
But holy crap am I not enjoying the second time around in terms 60-70. I go from leveling my 30ish frost mage to my level 61 feral dr00d and the fun factor goes from like 90 to 10 in a heartbeat. To say nothing of my 65 rogue who's been that level for 4-5 months now.
I don't know if it's the pacing, if I hate Outland, or what, but man leveling my 60+ characters is no fun right now. If the pacing's similar in WoTLK, I'm sorta afraid the same thing will happen again----level one character through and never want to do it again.
mynameisguido on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
i think its mainly because of how suddenly the levelling slows down
you feel like you're making great progress in 1-60, because knuckling down, even past about 40, you can get a level an hour fairly constantly. What I found helped was, rather than focusing on level progression 60-70, focus on zone progression. Congratulate yourself when you finished Hellfire, and so on. By the time you've congratulated yourself for finishing Nagrand, you should be fairly close to 70.
That's a pretty good way to look at it I guess. My problem will be not noticing how slow that bar is moving though.
Of course, my altitis helps nothing in this regard. When weighing what to spend my time on, it's hard to get myself to grind towards a single level when I can make significant progress on my lower level characters.
I mean, I'm really looking forward to Ice Barrier....and the choice between getting to a cool new ability and getting towards another level that may not give you anything significant is generally an easy one.
That's a pretty good way to look at it I guess. My problem will be not noticing how slow that bar is moving though.
Of course, my altitis helps nothing in this regard. When weighing what to spend my time on, it's hard to get myself to grind towards a single level when I can make significant progress on my lower level characters.
I mean, I'm really looking forward to Ice Barrier....and the choice between getting to a cool new ability and getting towards another level that may not give you anything significant is generally an easy one.
Ice Barrier is wonderful.
CJTheran on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
Ice Barrier is pretty cool
I remember I specced Frost on my mage recently for the first time since the day I got rank 1 Ice Barrier.
I was running around in PvP wondering why it didn't absorb much damage...had been using rank 1 all along.
That. That, so hard. There is absolutely no shortage of tanks. At all.
But the reason people can't find tanks is because good tanks don't PuG, and bad tanks don't play their tank class for long.
This, I think.
Also, something one of my (was prot, now ret pally) guildies posted on my guild's forums:
On the subject of non-raid tanking, as one of the ex-tanks that you can never find outside of raids, I'll tell you why; all the tanks busted their asses back when badges FIRST came out with their select favorite 3 DPS and healer, got their badge rewards, their rep, and all that jazz, and now get absolutely nothing out of running anything. Take a look at the badge rewards compared to the pieces we're wearing... we've either already GOT them or we have better outta raids. I personally have some 100-ish badges stockpiled to turn into epic gems, and that's just leftover from months ago when I ran heroics regularly while still prot.
The PUG tank issue is in part due to a design flaw in Blizzard's raiding structure, because as it stands, a 25-man raid really can't field more than 3 real tanks. That means 10 people can't find a tank for 5-mans without respeccing. It was even worse with the old pre-BC format when you had 4 tanks tops to 40 raiders; right outta kara, tanks were a dime a dozen, since you usually ran with a MT and OT for a 10-man group. This disparity in tank percentage-to-raider is the core of the problem... made significantly more obvious by tanks picking their favorite 'good' healers and DPS and avoiding instancing with anyone but their favorite group. Finding a good PUG tank is next to impossible, because any good tank is able to pick and choose his groups. I should know; I certainly did.
This'd happen with more than just tanks, but apparently it's really noticeable with them. Characters run instances, characters gear up, characters no longer need to go back and run those instances. The 5-man runs rely on a constant stream of new characters reaching 70 and needing to power up.
SabreMau on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
and, since most of the new 70s are alts, they have four other well-geared people who can 4man a heroic and carry them through, so they don't even need to go to normal 5mans, and because they're undergeared for heroics, they can't go to any unless they have well-geared support, so they aren't pugging either.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty significant problem for new characters. Fortunately, dps is easy to make up for, but tanks are especially problematic. I'm not sure why healers don't have more trouble.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I actually rolled my first character (warrior) for the exclusive purpose of tanking. The idea of a huge orc grunt that was neigh-unkillable struck a chord with me. From 20-56 I basically exclusively tanked instances to level. As a result I always had the best gear for my level, and [ I like to think because I did my job well] was fairly high in demand for instancing in whatever level bracket I was at the time. Problem is, people stopped running PuGs after 56, and my guild dissolved right around the same time. All of a sudden I was forced to quest, and being an Arms warrior w/o First Aid was a big part of the reason why I quit.
Also, it's pretty hard to get into a raiding guild as a tank. I mean, they represent the smallest percentage of a raid with the highest responsibility. What's the incentive for a raiding guild to pick up someone who has no raiding experience? And because raids hardly ever pick up tanks, what's the purpose to gear up / instance as one? At least, that was my experience as a near-60, pre-TBC, pre-transfer tank. I'm sure a lot has changed, but I remember this being a huge issue for me at the time. Course it applies to people who want to raid but have no prior raiding experience whatsoever, but that's another issue altogether.
Also, it's pretty hard to get into a raiding guild as a tank. I mean, they represent the smallest percentage of a raid with the highest responsibility. What's the incentive for a raiding guild to pick up someone who has no raiding experience? And because raids hardly ever pick up tanks, what's the purpose to gear up / instance as one? At least, that was my experience as a near-60, pre-TBC, pre-transfer tank. I'm sure a lot has changed, but I remember this being a huge issue for me at the time. Course it applies to people who want to raid but have no prior raiding experience whatsoever, but that's another issue altogether.
Well, the way I did it was to roll into a half-PUG Kara run with a guild that was just starting out raiding. Then kept raiding with them for about half a year.
Usually a raiding guild will tell you on their webite/forums/realm forums recruitment post if they have a slot open for a tank. If they do, apply for it. If not, look elsewhere. Pretty simple. I know that most of the guild sites I've looked at have had slots open for, for example, a Feral Druid.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
Posts
In this month's UK PC Gamer there'a a large article about WotLK. In it are a series of developer interviews. In one, this question in Tom Chilton's interview caught my eye:
Now i'm sorry, call me a miserable, pessimistic old bastard if you want but how many people do you thuink will choose tanking of any sort over either of the two DPS trees available. Especially when one involves raising the motherfucking dead back to life to fight for you!
The fucking issue here is NOT that there aren't enough tanks, it's that tanking is a miserable, shitty experience of fighting your own fucking PARTY more than the mobs! And those that don't suffer from that problem aren't going to stick around in 5-mans for long. They'll be waltzing off to bloody raid and burn out there.
Essentially the problem is a lack of tanks staying in the 5-man (heroic or otherwise) area. And for every 1 tank and healer being re/rolled, you get about 10 'loldps!' mouthbreathers/burned out tanks!
tl:dr: Fuck Blizzard and their out-of-touch attitude to WoW. Stupid pissants should ask real fucking players what the situation really is.
P.S. sorry for the rant but i've been burned on both sides of the issue (burnt out tank and healer with tankless groups) and am thouroughly sick of the crap.
http://news.curse.com/details/10417/
basically it sounds like there won't be one tank tree now... when I look at the leaked DK talents, I really don't see many geared toward tanking... it's hard to envision a tank with hardly any true tank talents tanking a high-end raid boss... but I guess we'll see how it works when we get there
I love your guild name. :P
"HOORAY! The Deathknight is an unprecdented success! Break out the champagne! There are 12 million subscribers in game, and 14 million deathknights on the servers! Dance everyone! Dance!"
"Errr... they have a tanking tree, right?"
"OF COURSE! That's part of why we introduced them! Didn't you get the memo?!"
"... then why are 13.5 million of them spec'd for damage. And because of re-rolls, actual 'tanks' per server are now down 30%."
"........ fuck me. SOMEONE GO FIND THE NERF STICK!"
thanks
That. That, so hard. There is absolutely no shortage of tanks. At all.
But the reason people can't find tanks is because good tanks don't PuG, and bad tanks don't play their tank class for long.
Even if Blizzard found a way to make healing/tanking fun, the low-entry ceiling of the game will negate any benefits that may have when it comes to the average player.
Healers fair a little better, they can at least PvP. But it still sucks smiting your daily mobs to death.
Of course, if I'm in a pug and some retard can't handle his or her shit, I will instruct the healer to let him or her die. And laugh.
Defiance will be passive (they'll probably throw the 6 expertise onto another talent) and Shield Slam will be trainable. This lets virtually anyone be a decent 5-man tank, regardless of spec.
It also allows Blizzard to add more neat talents like the +15% crit on HS, Cleave, and T.Clap where Defiance is currently.
The more functional they make tanks without the requirement of a talent spec, the more tanks you will see.
i like to think i'm number two
This, I think.
Also, something one of my (was prot, now ret pally) guildies posted on my guild's forums:
On the subject of non-raid tanking, as one of the ex-tanks that you can never find outside of raids, I'll tell you why; all the tanks busted their asses back when badges FIRST came out with their select favorite 3 DPS and healer, got their badge rewards, their rep, and all that jazz, and now get absolutely nothing out of running anything. Take a look at the badge rewards compared to the pieces we're wearing... we've either already GOT them or we have better outta raids. I personally have some 100-ish badges stockpiled to turn into epic gems, and that's just leftover from months ago when I ran heroics regularly while still prot.
The PUG tank issue is in part due to a design flaw in Blizzard's raiding structure, because as it stands, a 25-man raid really can't field more than 3 real tanks. That means 10 people can't find a tank for 5-mans without respeccing. It was even worse with the old pre-BC format when you had 4 tanks tops to 40 raiders; right outta kara, tanks were a dime a dozen, since you usually ran with a MT and OT for a 10-man group. This disparity in tank percentage-to-raider is the core of the problem... made significantly more obvious by tanks picking their favorite 'good' healers and DPS and avoiding instancing with anyone but their favorite group. Finding a good PUG tank is next to impossible, because any good tank is able to pick and choose his groups. I should know; I certainly did.
omg yes
i have never seen these before, this is exciting!
that can't go through to live
way too good, even for 40 points deep in arms
yesssss
grumble grumble at the first one, a big olololol at the second
man, they are going to need a badass 51 point talent in arms to make me not go 37/31/3
I'm a fourth type: the trusted sidekick next to the born leader that tanks whatever I get pointed at, and do it very well. I'm just not good at leading myself.
From the leaked alpha...Jeebus.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Boooo
nerf inevitable
However, it looks like a deep Disc healing spec will be more viable, so I'm extremely interested in that.
EDIT: But yeah, this will all be different slightly by the time it launches, I'm not actually hoping for anything besides a Frost Wyrm flyer.
Shamans-
You guys get an Air Elemental totem now!
I will not deal with one guild anymore because the number of them I had the write down.
Why don't they just break down and make divine spirit a trained spell? and the imporved a talent?
Boo hiss it seems that cheap shot/back stab will no longer work
There would be rioting in the streets if they did this.
Rioting.
But holy crap am I not enjoying the second time around in terms 60-70. I go from leveling my 30ish frost mage to my level 61 feral dr00d and the fun factor goes from like 90 to 10 in a heartbeat. To say nothing of my 65 rogue who's been that level for 4-5 months now.
I don't know if it's the pacing, if I hate Outland, or what, but man leveling my 60+ characters is no fun right now. If the pacing's similar in WoTLK, I'm sorta afraid the same thing will happen again----level one character through and never want to do it again.
you feel like you're making great progress in 1-60, because knuckling down, even past about 40, you can get a level an hour fairly constantly. What I found helped was, rather than focusing on level progression 60-70, focus on zone progression. Congratulate yourself when you finished Hellfire, and so on. By the time you've congratulated yourself for finishing Nagrand, you should be fairly close to 70.
Of course, my altitis helps nothing in this regard. When weighing what to spend my time on, it's hard to get myself to grind towards a single level when I can make significant progress on my lower level characters.
I mean, I'm really looking forward to Ice Barrier....and the choice between getting to a cool new ability and getting towards another level that may not give you anything significant is generally an easy one.
Ice Barrier is wonderful.
I remember I specced Frost on my mage recently for the first time since the day I got rank 1 Ice Barrier.
I was running around in PvP wondering why it didn't absorb much damage...had been using rank 1 all along.
Also, it's pretty hard to get into a raiding guild as a tank. I mean, they represent the smallest percentage of a raid with the highest responsibility. What's the incentive for a raiding guild to pick up someone who has no raiding experience? And because raids hardly ever pick up tanks, what's the purpose to gear up / instance as one? At least, that was my experience as a near-60, pre-TBC, pre-transfer tank. I'm sure a lot has changed, but I remember this being a huge issue for me at the time. Course it applies to people who want to raid but have no prior raiding experience whatsoever, but that's another issue altogether.
That's so fantastic.