I don't have to, because it's just a pug.
Then there's the long list of don't have tos.
I don't have to:
Flask
Pot
Eat
Perform at max capacity
Use my buffing spells
Use my cooldowns
Enchant my gear
Gem my gear
Reforge my gear
Run in an optimal spec
Know the content
Run in a spec that's suitable for my role at all
Disrobe my PvP gear
Wear gear that is suitable for my class, spec or role at all.
Pay attention during fights
Be physically present at my computer during fights
Do you see a trend?
Remove items from the list that are clearly absurd. If you have more than the three top most left for a five man or any at all for a proper raid, you're not casual, you're just bad.
Showing posts with label misconceptions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misconceptions. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Gevlon, playing to win and scrubs
I'm an avid follower of The Greedy Goblin blog, and today I found a rehash of an old gamer topic. How to play to win.
Gevlon has compiled the results from another writer, applied it to the Tol Barad fights, and arrived at an interesting, albeit fundamentally incorrect, insight.
There's a catch in almost all the play to win discussions, and one that most fail to understand. The play to win scenarios are all applied games with two opposing sides, and almost always applied to games with two opposing players. That is, a duel.
While you can, to a great degree, use the result for two opposing teams, in reality you have to add a a lot of unknowns to the calculations, almost all of them social in nature. In a duel, there is an 'I' and a 'you' and one only needs to fill in the aspects of what makes a highly competitive player. Hard core if you will.
Two opposing teams are just that, teams. If you mix the individually best of the best together in a team you have a recipie for disaster. You need the grunts as well as the divas, and you need to bend every member of your team just that little bit that makes the team work optimally. This will invariably mean nerfing the individual qualities to a certain degree.
Then there is another aspect, one which is only recognized by those of us gamers who came from the cooperative type of games that once monopolized the term RPG. In today's WoW it would be PvE, and it would be PvE in every aspect of the abbreviation.
In the typical old-style RPG you can't win. You can only become better, at which time you're rewarded by obstacles matching your new an enchanced abilties. The continuous matching between increased abilities and harder opponents creates an illusion of iterative increase in character strength. One that is easily identified by the gamer at that. So even the old table top RPGs added fluff. Build a castle, employ retainers, join fictious competitions where the goal is not to kill but merely to win glory.
It's there in WoW. Get a rare mount, or an equally rare tabard. Gain a stupid title.
This is where Gevlon lacks understanding. While he correctly identifies fluff for what it is, and equally correctly notes that no player who doesn't collect mounts will even notice that rare mount, he fails tounderstand where it all began. The hard core table top gamer spent entire gaming sessions to gain fictive titles which would have no impact on a game only played by a group of four or five players. There wasn't even a theoretical opportunity to impress another player with that 'rare mount'.
So why would anyone spend time to get virtually nothing in a game played within the confines of a closely knit group?
The magic word here is simulation. You have the Sims, Sim City and their ilk for the computer, and there is a huge number of similar games out there, based on communities where social interaction lie at the core.
Now, WoW comes with both competitive gaming and simulation as well as old-style RPG elements. And it mixes them all together horisontally rather than vertically, which is exactly what you aim for when you design any kind of multiplayer on-line RPG.
There is an element of vertical stratification going on now. You can see it in the implementation of instant PvP and instant dungeons. Raids are the only events where someone has to physically transport characters to a location. This, in turn, leads to full cities and empty landscapes, and the cities serve the function of chat channels.
Chat channels for idle and bored players. Most of them aren't competitors at all, but they're still players. They'll never become competitive at anything, raiding, PvP or even collecting rare fluff, but they're still participating. A few of them can become surprisingly good at an aspect of the game very well known to us old RPG gamers -- sabotage.
The best known WoW saboteur, planned by the entire group or not, would be Leeroy Jenkins. And most would believe that only the unable resort to those stunts, but as there is great fun involved even for a decently progressed tank I think we can safely move Gevlon's assesment to the corner of incorrect preconceptions, where it belongs.
The concept of play to win simply cannot be applied to a gaming environment which to a large degree is built as a simulation. While you certainly can, and there definitely are people, playing to win specific aspects of that simulation, what constitutes winning varies from player to player. It is indeed subjective.
The final proof of this subjectivity comes from the real world. The obsessed collector. There is no respect to be gained from collecting well known stolen pieces of art. The moment you're known to collect stolen art your most likely reward is a few years in prison, not to speak of losing all the illegaly gained pieces of art you have. Still these people exist.
They win by having something they can never show. They also tend to have amassed quite an impressive amount of money in order to enable them to buy the stolen art to begin with. Lawless, possibly, but scrubs, most definitely not.
Gevlon has compiled the results from another writer, applied it to the Tol Barad fights, and arrived at an interesting, albeit fundamentally incorrect, insight.
There's a catch in almost all the play to win discussions, and one that most fail to understand. The play to win scenarios are all applied games with two opposing sides, and almost always applied to games with two opposing players. That is, a duel.
While you can, to a great degree, use the result for two opposing teams, in reality you have to add a a lot of unknowns to the calculations, almost all of them social in nature. In a duel, there is an 'I' and a 'you' and one only needs to fill in the aspects of what makes a highly competitive player. Hard core if you will.
Two opposing teams are just that, teams. If you mix the individually best of the best together in a team you have a recipie for disaster. You need the grunts as well as the divas, and you need to bend every member of your team just that little bit that makes the team work optimally. This will invariably mean nerfing the individual qualities to a certain degree.
Then there is another aspect, one which is only recognized by those of us gamers who came from the cooperative type of games that once monopolized the term RPG. In today's WoW it would be PvE, and it would be PvE in every aspect of the abbreviation.
In the typical old-style RPG you can't win. You can only become better, at which time you're rewarded by obstacles matching your new an enchanced abilties. The continuous matching between increased abilities and harder opponents creates an illusion of iterative increase in character strength. One that is easily identified by the gamer at that. So even the old table top RPGs added fluff. Build a castle, employ retainers, join fictious competitions where the goal is not to kill but merely to win glory.
It's there in WoW. Get a rare mount, or an equally rare tabard. Gain a stupid title.
This is where Gevlon lacks understanding. While he correctly identifies fluff for what it is, and equally correctly notes that no player who doesn't collect mounts will even notice that rare mount, he fails tounderstand where it all began. The hard core table top gamer spent entire gaming sessions to gain fictive titles which would have no impact on a game only played by a group of four or five players. There wasn't even a theoretical opportunity to impress another player with that 'rare mount'.
So why would anyone spend time to get virtually nothing in a game played within the confines of a closely knit group?
The magic word here is simulation. You have the Sims, Sim City and their ilk for the computer, and there is a huge number of similar games out there, based on communities where social interaction lie at the core.
Now, WoW comes with both competitive gaming and simulation as well as old-style RPG elements. And it mixes them all together horisontally rather than vertically, which is exactly what you aim for when you design any kind of multiplayer on-line RPG.
There is an element of vertical stratification going on now. You can see it in the implementation of instant PvP and instant dungeons. Raids are the only events where someone has to physically transport characters to a location. This, in turn, leads to full cities and empty landscapes, and the cities serve the function of chat channels.
Chat channels for idle and bored players. Most of them aren't competitors at all, but they're still players. They'll never become competitive at anything, raiding, PvP or even collecting rare fluff, but they're still participating. A few of them can become surprisingly good at an aspect of the game very well known to us old RPG gamers -- sabotage.
The best known WoW saboteur, planned by the entire group or not, would be Leeroy Jenkins. And most would believe that only the unable resort to those stunts, but as there is great fun involved even for a decently progressed tank I think we can safely move Gevlon's assesment to the corner of incorrect preconceptions, where it belongs.
The concept of play to win simply cannot be applied to a gaming environment which to a large degree is built as a simulation. While you certainly can, and there definitely are people, playing to win specific aspects of that simulation, what constitutes winning varies from player to player. It is indeed subjective.
The final proof of this subjectivity comes from the real world. The obsessed collector. There is no respect to be gained from collecting well known stolen pieces of art. The moment you're known to collect stolen art your most likely reward is a few years in prison, not to speak of losing all the illegaly gained pieces of art you have. Still these people exist.
They win by having something they can never show. They also tend to have amassed quite an impressive amount of money in order to enable them to buy the stolen art to begin with. Lawless, possibly, but scrubs, most definitely not.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
We're too weak
The argument that the paladin tank is too weak in comparision with the other three tanking specs is something often voiced on the official cesspool. When you check the posters you'll notice how they compare themselves with other tanks in similar gear.
They're lying.
They compare themselves with other tanks in similar gear gemmed and enchanted to do the job. And they compare themselves with tanks in gear that was designed for tanking.
There's nothing casual about going to work in a third PvP gear, gear unenchanted and half of it ungemmed.
Let's have a look at the difference between similar gear and a half-arsed lie, slot by slot:
Helmet enchant is 90 stamina and 35 dodge rating
Shoulders 75 stamina and 25 dodge rating
Cloak 250 armour
Chest 75 stamina
Wrists 50 dodge rating
Weapon, anything ranging from some selfhealing to proccing avoidance (so preferably Windwalk)
Shield 50 mastery rating
Feet 50 mastery rating
Legs 145 stamina and 55 agility
Belt a belt socket (which normally translates into 40 mastery rating)
Hands 65 mastery rating
There are also 13 gemslots of varying colours, one of which is a meta gem slot. Let's say you're skipping on six of these, two of each kind. That's 2 40 master gems, 2 20 mastery 20 parry gems and 2 20 mastery and 30 stamina gems.
Let's sum it all up.
445 stamina
110 dodge rating
40 parry rating
365 mastery rating
55 agility
One perfectly useful weapon enchant.
Next let's place the result of two tanks with distinctly different quality of gear side by side.
One would be myself in an average 358 item-level and the other a paladin tank with 350 average item-level who I found on-line. I have padded out the 350 tank with the missing enchants (why did this not surprise me).
7353 vs 7318 stamina
1387 vs 1716 dodge rating
12.43 vs 12.80 percent dodge (this shows why agility is a surprisingly strong tanking stat)
1647 vs 1661 parry rating
13.49 vs 13.55 percent parry
3048 vs 1824 mastery rating
61.25 vs 46.4 percent block
The strategic difference between us is mainly one trinket. I'm running double mastery trinkets, and the other tank is carrying a stamina one. There is a smaller difference in gemming philosophy. I'm getting mastery but the other tank is scrambling to pick up as much dodge rating as is humanly possible.
We're pretty even apart from the not so minor detail of 15% block chance in my favour and 0.50% avoidance chance in his. In a raid he'd take close to 25% straight hits, and I would take 8%. Healers will tell the difference. To close some of that gap he has to drop 427 stamina to gain 4% block. Now he'd be way below the safety health limit for a raid, and he'd still be 11% block behind me. This is perfectly normal. I am, after all, geared eight ilevels better than he is. A rather distinct difference is to be expected.
Now, if I was to remove my enchants, what happens? I'd lose all of the the stamina advantage he has made from that one trinket. I'm dropping 0.50% in avoidance. I'm losing 4.5% block. And, of course, I'll lose my weapon enchant.
Incidentally it would be easy for me to regain that stamina. I slap on a trinket of my own and end up with almost exactly the same amount of stamina as he has. That would, however, cost me another 4% block.
I'm now matching his stamina, lagging 1% avoidance behind him, and my block is a mere 6.5% ahead of his. If I for some reason wanted to, I could convert some of that block to make up for that 1% avoidance. So dropping about 2.7% block would gain me that 1% avoidance.
I'm now ahead by 3.8% block but missing a weapon enchant. As I've chosen to gear in two agility based pieces we're also pretty much even on strength. The missing weapon enchant is Windwalk. The proccing 600 dodge rating has an uptime of close to 30%, so say 160 dodge rating over time. That matches about 2% block, so I'm still ahead by 1.8% block.
So, I might have failed to prove that missing enchants and missing half of the gems available fully makes up for an average of eight item-levels. It is damn close though. Cheat on another three yellow gem-slots and me and that tank are virtually identical.
If we start to throw PvP gear into the equation it isn't even funny.
We're not too weak -- they're too damn lazy to make up for two thirds of a tier-level's worth of difference in gear, and that's not anywhere close to comparable gear.
They're lying.
They compare themselves with other tanks in similar gear gemmed and enchanted to do the job. And they compare themselves with tanks in gear that was designed for tanking.
There's nothing casual about going to work in a third PvP gear, gear unenchanted and half of it ungemmed.
Let's have a look at the difference between similar gear and a half-arsed lie, slot by slot:
Helmet enchant is 90 stamina and 35 dodge rating
Shoulders 75 stamina and 25 dodge rating
Cloak 250 armour
Chest 75 stamina
Wrists 50 dodge rating
Weapon, anything ranging from some selfhealing to proccing avoidance (so preferably Windwalk)
Shield 50 mastery rating
Feet 50 mastery rating
Legs 145 stamina and 55 agility
Belt a belt socket (which normally translates into 40 mastery rating)
Hands 65 mastery rating
There are also 13 gemslots of varying colours, one of which is a meta gem slot. Let's say you're skipping on six of these, two of each kind. That's 2 40 master gems, 2 20 mastery 20 parry gems and 2 20 mastery and 30 stamina gems.
Let's sum it all up.
445 stamina
110 dodge rating
40 parry rating
365 mastery rating
55 agility
One perfectly useful weapon enchant.
Next let's place the result of two tanks with distinctly different quality of gear side by side.
One would be myself in an average 358 item-level and the other a paladin tank with 350 average item-level who I found on-line. I have padded out the 350 tank with the missing enchants (why did this not surprise me).
7353 vs 7318 stamina
1387 vs 1716 dodge rating
12.43 vs 12.80 percent dodge (this shows why agility is a surprisingly strong tanking stat)
1647 vs 1661 parry rating
13.49 vs 13.55 percent parry
3048 vs 1824 mastery rating
61.25 vs 46.4 percent block
The strategic difference between us is mainly one trinket. I'm running double mastery trinkets, and the other tank is carrying a stamina one. There is a smaller difference in gemming philosophy. I'm getting mastery but the other tank is scrambling to pick up as much dodge rating as is humanly possible.
We're pretty even apart from the not so minor detail of 15% block chance in my favour and 0.50% avoidance chance in his. In a raid he'd take close to 25% straight hits, and I would take 8%. Healers will tell the difference. To close some of that gap he has to drop 427 stamina to gain 4% block. Now he'd be way below the safety health limit for a raid, and he'd still be 11% block behind me. This is perfectly normal. I am, after all, geared eight ilevels better than he is. A rather distinct difference is to be expected.
Now, if I was to remove my enchants, what happens? I'd lose all of the the stamina advantage he has made from that one trinket. I'm dropping 0.50% in avoidance. I'm losing 4.5% block. And, of course, I'll lose my weapon enchant.
Incidentally it would be easy for me to regain that stamina. I slap on a trinket of my own and end up with almost exactly the same amount of stamina as he has. That would, however, cost me another 4% block.
I'm now matching his stamina, lagging 1% avoidance behind him, and my block is a mere 6.5% ahead of his. If I for some reason wanted to, I could convert some of that block to make up for that 1% avoidance. So dropping about 2.7% block would gain me that 1% avoidance.
I'm now ahead by 3.8% block but missing a weapon enchant. As I've chosen to gear in two agility based pieces we're also pretty much even on strength. The missing weapon enchant is Windwalk. The proccing 600 dodge rating has an uptime of close to 30%, so say 160 dodge rating over time. That matches about 2% block, so I'm still ahead by 1.8% block.
So, I might have failed to prove that missing enchants and missing half of the gems available fully makes up for an average of eight item-levels. It is damn close though. Cheat on another three yellow gem-slots and me and that tank are virtually identical.
If we start to throw PvP gear into the equation it isn't even funny.
We're not too weak -- they're too damn lazy to make up for two thirds of a tier-level's worth of difference in gear, and that's not anywhere close to comparable gear.
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