Well, for once us pugging tanks are in the same seat as pugging dps. The queue for LFR is a nightmare. Half an hour is perfectly normal, and you can't count on seeing the first bosses.
At least the content looks faceroll enough to make the five man trolls seem like a hulking obstacle when they were released.
My guess is that we'll see queue times lower as the raiding tanks collect their 4PC bonus and leave LFR never to return. Finding healers, however, will remain troublesome.
The other, maybe minor, issue with LFR for the pugadin is that we really don't need that much of the gear there. While the 4PC bonus is a huge boost for a raiding guild, a pugadin simply won't run into situations al that often where the difference between raidwalling every second or every third minute matters at all.
One could argue that the bonus is good in the LFR, but to be honest, we're roflstomping all over it the same week it's released. Sure, we're pugging with proper raiders, but gear inflation will be absurd between 378 five man drops and a very generous pool of 397 VP gear. Add the occasional 384 LFR drops bound to find their way to pugging raiders and we should expect to see 25k+ dps from even the more, erhum, unskilled dps a month or so from now. Healers are likely to see a similar increase in output.
I fully expect tanks gearing for expertise and hit-rating to handle both the new five mans and LFR within a couple of months. Partially because an average ilevel 390:ish allows us to do so, but also because there's a lot of threat slapped onto out VP gear.
Showing posts with label ramblings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ramblings. Show all posts
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
4.3 incoming
It would seem that 4.3 will be released soon.While the link pertains the end of PvP season 10 at November15 those seasons and PvE related major patches tend to follow eath other very closely. My estimate would be one week after season 10 is finished, so November 22 (or 23 for us in Europe).
Such an estimate would also correlate pretty well with the PTR receiving a Release Candidate.
Anyway, what will 4.3 mean for us pugging tankadins? Not all that much it would seem. Let's put the new content aside for a bit and just look at the tankadin. While Blizzard has decided to make a major overhaul come MoP, as the do every Xpac, they'll let us keep our rather insane mastery for 4.3. Say hello to 102.4 even as a pugadin. At the other hand, that also means if you take an unmitigated hit, then you'll be considered doing something wrong.
So we'll continue to be the holy tin-can with an oversized barn door as extra protection for, say another half a year or more. I'd guess they'll slap in some kind of micro content patch late 4.3, like the very last dragon-raid during WotLK. And, as usual, I expect whatever new mechanics are being implemented in MoP to go live in Cata around a month or so before MoP is released. So don't expect a major overhaul of our abilities until August - October 2012.
With Blizzard losing subscribers left and right I don't expect them fo keep us running the last major patch in Cata for a full year. That would be akin to corporate suicide, so I might be too pessimistic when guessing at August - October. But then, who in their right mind would even consider releasing a major patch for a computer game in July -- oops, ok, maybe, after all.
Such an estimate would also correlate pretty well with the PTR receiving a Release Candidate.
Anyway, what will 4.3 mean for us pugging tankadins? Not all that much it would seem. Let's put the new content aside for a bit and just look at the tankadin. While Blizzard has decided to make a major overhaul come MoP, as the do every Xpac, they'll let us keep our rather insane mastery for 4.3. Say hello to 102.4 even as a pugadin. At the other hand, that also means if you take an unmitigated hit, then you'll be considered doing something wrong.
So we'll continue to be the holy tin-can with an oversized barn door as extra protection for, say another half a year or more. I'd guess they'll slap in some kind of micro content patch late 4.3, like the very last dragon-raid during WotLK. And, as usual, I expect whatever new mechanics are being implemented in MoP to go live in Cata around a month or so before MoP is released. So don't expect a major overhaul of our abilities until August - October 2012.
With Blizzard losing subscribers left and right I don't expect them fo keep us running the last major patch in Cata for a full year. That would be akin to corporate suicide, so I might be too pessimistic when guessing at August - October. But then, who in their right mind would even consider releasing a major patch for a computer game in July -- oops, ok, maybe, after all.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Standstill
I guess I'm not alone waiting for 4.3 and more or less merely going through the motions of playing the game at this time.
Even us casuals should be pretty much fully geared from Valor Points by now. I'm converting mine into CP for a slow upgrade in PvP gear, but by now it's more levelling alts and running random BG:s than actually trying to tank anything in a serious fashion.
To further aggravate the feeling of merely waiting, the announced Pandaren expansion kind of devalued the upcoming 4.3 as well. It feels like something that has to be done before what we're really waiting for arrives, and I suspect a fair number of players will leave the game as a result. Instead of waiting a couple of months we're now waiting for the lion's share of a year, because that seems a reasonable time before the next Xpac arrives. And a year is a long time waiting.
So things are at a standstill. There's very little discussion going on at Maintankadin, a sure sign in itself that there's very little going on at all. Hopefully the patch will liven up things a bit, but I'm not entirely psitive that'll be the case. And I wait.
Even us casuals should be pretty much fully geared from Valor Points by now. I'm converting mine into CP for a slow upgrade in PvP gear, but by now it's more levelling alts and running random BG:s than actually trying to tank anything in a serious fashion.
To further aggravate the feeling of merely waiting, the announced Pandaren expansion kind of devalued the upcoming 4.3 as well. It feels like something that has to be done before what we're really waiting for arrives, and I suspect a fair number of players will leave the game as a result. Instead of waiting a couple of months we're now waiting for the lion's share of a year, because that seems a reasonable time before the next Xpac arrives. And a year is a long time waiting.
So things are at a standstill. There's very little discussion going on at Maintankadin, a sure sign in itself that there's very little going on at all. Hopefully the patch will liven up things a bit, but I'm not entirely psitive that'll be the case. And I wait.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Vengeance, the revenge of the retards
Once upon a time there was a concept developer who came up with the idea that the warrior class should have a bit of a berserker in them. A warrior should become enraged if he/she was being hurt.
Even though it sounded like a great concept, eventually warrior tanks ran into problems. They were being starved for rage, and so they had to remove some of the mighty armour that protected them in order to become properly enraged and inflict damage.
That was, in general, considered as a bad thing.
Having seen problems like these evolve over time, the very same developer visited someone higher in the hierarchy of those who had, among other things, created the warriors.
"What do you want?" asked the boss.
The developer rolled his head slowly, a string of spittle stretching from his half open mouth towards the floor.
"Ah, I see you have come up with a new and daring concept." said the boss.
The developer nodded, eyes glimmering with a frightening absence of coherent thought.
"It must be a grand idea indeed." exclaimed the boss. "Implement it! It is my wish."
And thus was it decided that all tanks, not only the warrior variant, begat something berserkerish about them. Whenever a tank is hurt a desperate need for revenge grows, and the tank hits back harder.
Astonishingly enough this resulted in a pecualiar problem. As time passed, all tanks noticed that they were becoming less and less vengeful, and that as a result they didn't hit things as hard as they had used to.
Three out of four tanks knew that some tanks had whispered dark words about a very similar problem, and so those three fourths turned to their warrior colleagues. And lo and behold, the warriors knew the answer.
"Remove the mighty armour that protects you, and you shall become properly vengeful again." they said. And all tanks concurred.
And the healers groaned in dismay, but as healers are prone to groaning noone took much notice.
This, my dear reader, is the reason I'm carrying four sets of gear in my bags, two more than I should decently have. One for quests and tier 1 Cata heroics. One for BH, tier 1 raids and the troll heroics. One for PvP, and one for raiding. Because, you see, my raiding set, the very best gear I have, isn't good enough for tanking content I should be bulldoozing through.
And this, my dear reader, is why one shouldn't have drooling retards as concept developers in a computer games studio, and expecially not a management who would agree to their idiocies.
Even though it sounded like a great concept, eventually warrior tanks ran into problems. They were being starved for rage, and so they had to remove some of the mighty armour that protected them in order to become properly enraged and inflict damage.
That was, in general, considered as a bad thing.
Having seen problems like these evolve over time, the very same developer visited someone higher in the hierarchy of those who had, among other things, created the warriors.
"What do you want?" asked the boss.
The developer rolled his head slowly, a string of spittle stretching from his half open mouth towards the floor.
"Ah, I see you have come up with a new and daring concept." said the boss.
The developer nodded, eyes glimmering with a frightening absence of coherent thought.
"It must be a grand idea indeed." exclaimed the boss. "Implement it! It is my wish."
And thus was it decided that all tanks, not only the warrior variant, begat something berserkerish about them. Whenever a tank is hurt a desperate need for revenge grows, and the tank hits back harder.
Astonishingly enough this resulted in a pecualiar problem. As time passed, all tanks noticed that they were becoming less and less vengeful, and that as a result they didn't hit things as hard as they had used to.
Three out of four tanks knew that some tanks had whispered dark words about a very similar problem, and so those three fourths turned to their warrior colleagues. And lo and behold, the warriors knew the answer.
"Remove the mighty armour that protects you, and you shall become properly vengeful again." they said. And all tanks concurred.
And the healers groaned in dismay, but as healers are prone to groaning noone took much notice.
This, my dear reader, is the reason I'm carrying four sets of gear in my bags, two more than I should decently have. One for quests and tier 1 Cata heroics. One for BH, tier 1 raids and the troll heroics. One for PvP, and one for raiding. Because, you see, my raiding set, the very best gear I have, isn't good enough for tanking content I should be bulldoozing through.
And this, my dear reader, is why one shouldn't have drooling retards as concept developers in a computer games studio, and expecially not a management who would agree to their idiocies.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Strange failsafe in 4.2
The failsafe tanking gear is somewhat confusing in 4.2.
First you get an absolutely fantastic cloak from the Thrall quest chain. Then it gets weird. The neck-piece you get after a day's worth of questing Molten Front is a threat piece, and a good one at that. The 378 cloak from Avengers of Hyjal is a direct downgrade compared with the Thrall quest one, unless you're desperate for hit-rating.
The 365 boots are a downgrade from the rep 359 ones, and the reward for pushing to honoured with the Avengers of Hyjal, a 378 belt, is suspiciously close to a side-grade from the crafted 359.
While you should eventually be able to grab some good bracers from the Molten Front quests, your 378 Valor Points option is likely a downgrade.
All in all we're getting stamina and armour force-fed to us, but the other stats are mildly put strangely distributed.
Now, the boring thing is that if the increase in stamina and armour is great enough, then it is indeed an upgrade, but as both stamina and armour are linked to the ilevel of the item, very little remains for personal configuration. At least in you stick with tanking gear. Now, if you go insane and start looking at dps and PvP gear, then you could find some gems of superior tanking gear.
Weird is weird.
First you get an absolutely fantastic cloak from the Thrall quest chain. Then it gets weird. The neck-piece you get after a day's worth of questing Molten Front is a threat piece, and a good one at that. The 378 cloak from Avengers of Hyjal is a direct downgrade compared with the Thrall quest one, unless you're desperate for hit-rating.
The 365 boots are a downgrade from the rep 359 ones, and the reward for pushing to honoured with the Avengers of Hyjal, a 378 belt, is suspiciously close to a side-grade from the crafted 359.
While you should eventually be able to grab some good bracers from the Molten Front quests, your 378 Valor Points option is likely a downgrade.
All in all we're getting stamina and armour force-fed to us, but the other stats are mildly put strangely distributed.
Now, the boring thing is that if the increase in stamina and armour is great enough, then it is indeed an upgrade, but as both stamina and armour are linked to the ilevel of the item, very little remains for personal configuration. At least in you stick with tanking gear. Now, if you go insane and start looking at dps and PvP gear, then you could find some gems of superior tanking gear.
Weird is weird.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
The true joys of tanking pugs
There are moments, few and far between, when pugging is the best there is.
I hit Zul'Aman by means of the LFD. Queue is, as usual, immediate, but so is the player response. This usually means I'll end up in the middle of the instance, and quite often in an ongoing fight.
I brace myself.
15 minutes to rescue prisoners. The instance is virgin. As the stupid gong session is done, and the doors open, my healer opens us on party chat: "Kakad, I want a fast run."
Now, I'm just about as far from a proponent of the 'gogo' mentality as is possible, but if it's the healer who wants to give us a headache, then I'll give him hell. So I ride down the stairs, turn left, body-aggro the untauntable sentinel and pull from horse back.
One of the two mobs is ripped from me. I taunt back and watch my primary target getting ripped from me as well. It's dead before it reaches the offending dps.
This part of the instance is like a mini gauntlet, and I'm getting outaggroed left and right.
Now, get me right. I'm not a fantastic tank by any means, but I'm fairly competent. If stuff get ripped away from me, then someone is doing something seriously wrong -- or something extremely seriously right. Scanning my surroundings I notice that anything dangerous I lost aggro from is sheeped. Nobody is taking any damage, and things die at a speed I've never seen before. RF is on, I'm doing close to 20k dps, and things are lost all over the place, and die.
When we ride up to the boss I have time to watch recount for the first time. Two mages are solidly placed at above 40k dps, and one shammy is lagging behind at a lowly 30k.
I don't even ask if anyone is ready and pull the boss from horse back. He never even gets to the first storm cloud before going down, and I have to taunt him back twice at the start.
While this ought to make me happy, it actually makes me quite irritated. I decide to show the healer that things can be pulled even faster and more recklessly than he thought was possible. It doesn't matter. Things die at a staggering pace, and in a last attempt to test their mettle I just bomb the trash before boss number two without any communication.
Two targets sheeped and the remaining bears peeled to me as if we had been planning the CC a minute in advance.
Needless to say things die, as does the boss, and we continue the barrage. Nothing stops the maniac mages from out aggroing me, but they simply refuse to take any damage. I'm frantically using everything available in my arsenal, but they're simply too fast for me. I can't even make a mess of the last pull before the hatchling boss. Casters are sheeped immediately and the group falls over and dies.
The boss-fight, however, is a mess. Both adds are immediately killed, and the boss takes damage at an alarming rate. Before the second spawn everything is hatched. I flunk and forget to bubble my healer who dies immediately. Flipping all my cooldowns in short time, including a full self-heal I stay up long enough to see most adds vanish in a maddening cloud of AoE, and then there are three dps alone with a boss. Two of them manage to stay alive for over twenty seconds, and to my enormous surprise the boss keels over.
For the first time the healer complains, and rightfully so.
We burn our way to boss number four. This is a part of the fight I do in my sleep, so I concentrate on generating max dps. Still, close to 25k dps as tank isn't enough to hold aggro, but by now I just don't care. The group is superb, we hit the boss, it dies and I get some kind of funny achievement.
When I'm ready to pull the trash prior to the last two bosses I notice that two of my dps are absent. They stay absent. One of them continue to stay absent. Then a loot-message for some kind of mount pops on my screen. Realising I've forgotten to look at the cashe for speed-running the instance I decide to greed rather than need. All four pass and just throw me a 'congrats'. Now, that takes style. They could just have sped away together with me, but for some reason they decided to prolong the run by digging up a mount none of them were interested in.
The last part of the dungeon gets eradicated in the same style and I thank the group for the best pug I've seen in my life. The response is something along: "Yep, good run, decent tank."
That's about when it slowly dawns on me it wasn't really a pug. All four of them come from the same server.
What was the best run for me ever would likely have turned out to be a first class nightmare for a more green tank.
It made me realise you have to watch for what you wish for -- it might come true.
The joys of tanking pugs.
I hit Zul'Aman by means of the LFD. Queue is, as usual, immediate, but so is the player response. This usually means I'll end up in the middle of the instance, and quite often in an ongoing fight.
I brace myself.
15 minutes to rescue prisoners. The instance is virgin. As the stupid gong session is done, and the doors open, my healer opens us on party chat: "Kakad, I want a fast run."
Now, I'm just about as far from a proponent of the 'gogo' mentality as is possible, but if it's the healer who wants to give us a headache, then I'll give him hell. So I ride down the stairs, turn left, body-aggro the untauntable sentinel and pull from horse back.
One of the two mobs is ripped from me. I taunt back and watch my primary target getting ripped from me as well. It's dead before it reaches the offending dps.
This part of the instance is like a mini gauntlet, and I'm getting outaggroed left and right.
Now, get me right. I'm not a fantastic tank by any means, but I'm fairly competent. If stuff get ripped away from me, then someone is doing something seriously wrong -- or something extremely seriously right. Scanning my surroundings I notice that anything dangerous I lost aggro from is sheeped. Nobody is taking any damage, and things die at a speed I've never seen before. RF is on, I'm doing close to 20k dps, and things are lost all over the place, and die.
When we ride up to the boss I have time to watch recount for the first time. Two mages are solidly placed at above 40k dps, and one shammy is lagging behind at a lowly 30k.
I don't even ask if anyone is ready and pull the boss from horse back. He never even gets to the first storm cloud before going down, and I have to taunt him back twice at the start.
While this ought to make me happy, it actually makes me quite irritated. I decide to show the healer that things can be pulled even faster and more recklessly than he thought was possible. It doesn't matter. Things die at a staggering pace, and in a last attempt to test their mettle I just bomb the trash before boss number two without any communication.
Two targets sheeped and the remaining bears peeled to me as if we had been planning the CC a minute in advance.
Needless to say things die, as does the boss, and we continue the barrage. Nothing stops the maniac mages from out aggroing me, but they simply refuse to take any damage. I'm frantically using everything available in my arsenal, but they're simply too fast for me. I can't even make a mess of the last pull before the hatchling boss. Casters are sheeped immediately and the group falls over and dies.
The boss-fight, however, is a mess. Both adds are immediately killed, and the boss takes damage at an alarming rate. Before the second spawn everything is hatched. I flunk and forget to bubble my healer who dies immediately. Flipping all my cooldowns in short time, including a full self-heal I stay up long enough to see most adds vanish in a maddening cloud of AoE, and then there are three dps alone with a boss. Two of them manage to stay alive for over twenty seconds, and to my enormous surprise the boss keels over.
For the first time the healer complains, and rightfully so.
We burn our way to boss number four. This is a part of the fight I do in my sleep, so I concentrate on generating max dps. Still, close to 25k dps as tank isn't enough to hold aggro, but by now I just don't care. The group is superb, we hit the boss, it dies and I get some kind of funny achievement.
When I'm ready to pull the trash prior to the last two bosses I notice that two of my dps are absent. They stay absent. One of them continue to stay absent. Then a loot-message for some kind of mount pops on my screen. Realising I've forgotten to look at the cashe for speed-running the instance I decide to greed rather than need. All four pass and just throw me a 'congrats'. Now, that takes style. They could just have sped away together with me, but for some reason they decided to prolong the run by digging up a mount none of them were interested in.
The last part of the dungeon gets eradicated in the same style and I thank the group for the best pug I've seen in my life. The response is something along: "Yep, good run, decent tank."
That's about when it slowly dawns on me it wasn't really a pug. All four of them come from the same server.
What was the best run for me ever would likely have turned out to be a first class nightmare for a more green tank.
It made me realise you have to watch for what you wish for -- it might come true.
The joys of tanking pugs.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Joys of pugging
Having done my dailies, pushed my poor hunter to 75, spent 4k gold on the AH buying every scrap of Savage Leather there was and realising I'm stranded at 510 Leatherworking, I gave up on upgrading my leg enchants.
Sporeggar EU is a backwater realm, so I wasn't too surprised seeing that the AH gaped empty on the upgrade for the second day in a row. The old one would have to serve me for a while longer.
I caved in to the ilevel greed and crafted myself a second Elementium Earthguard, lost a minor amount of CTC as I downgraded my shield from the 353 drop in one of the Zuls. At least I gained some armour and stamina.
I had, as is usually the case early after a content patch, run out of excuses to delay getting on with the VP grinding. It was time for LFD.
Now, I'm sitting on an average ilevel 359 goto raiding set with some 32% avoidance and 60% block. A full tierlevel above the Zuls it means I'm taking a risk when it comes to threat due to Vengeance scaling at glacial speed. At the other hand you never know what cards you will be played concerning the other four people you'll be grouped up with.
I hit Zul'Aman.
I was dealt a silent DK who occasionally managed to break the 10k mark, a healer I never got to measure as I take very little damage, and two people playing the druid class, one who spent most of the time in bear form focussing on something in my tertiary AoE circle and complaining about my tanking.
You see, a paladin tank has a primary target, or circle if you so want. That's the object or objects who receive our single target attacks. We also have a secondary circle consisting of the targets who get hit by our multi target attacks, usually Avenger's Shield, and the occasional direct hit if threat starts running low. Then there is the tertiary circle. Those targets should normally have been the subject of CC during the pull, but if they're not, they only get the attention of our pure AoE damage.
Anyway, as we disgustingly slowly grind our way through the gauntlet to the first boss I find myself both topping the charts an throwing taunts on cooldown. The druids target just about everything in the tertiary circle and then some. I let the worst offender die twice to get a cleaner run. While losing a dps is usually bad, the 6k lost is in effect neglible.
Eventually we hit the boss, and we wipe horribly. I'm aware I'll have problems doing decent damage in my gear, so I'm slightly surprised seeing myself at a steady 10k. That's a pretty good sign the small adds aren't killed fast enough. After the wipe I check my Recount and am stunned. The DK runs 9.5k dps, which places him firmly in the top of the three dps. The druids lumber in at 5.5 and 6.5k respectively.
The 5.5k genious is livid about me not tanking the big eagle carrying away people, and I realise this will be a never ending run unless I get out. I inform the group that boss-fight dps below the tank is unacceptable, and that doing well below 50% of the minimum dps given the gear requirements of the instance is a joke. To my great relief I'm immediately kicked.
The next group is a business minded 13k dps (apart from the berserk 45k AoE hunter who never uttered a word of complaint) and environmentally aware healer. We have a lock who's strangely silent after I expressed my hopes for a better run and referred to the numericals from the previous disaster. After a few trash pulls going slightly slower than I expected one dps reminds me that five players might come in handy at the boss. I'm a bit surprised, but it turns out the lock is AFK, and I never noticed, something I remark upon. My friendly, present, dps links the overall 5k dps delieverd by the lock this far, and he's kicked. Stuff dies, we collect our VP, politely share thanks for a pleasant run and disperse.
I want 280 VP, so a new group it is. It's the usual semi-decent dps never attacking skull and breaking CC gang while complaining about retarded tank. I've grown too old to react on those by now. They usually, and inevitably did, quit halfway through the instance. I got a new set of those as replacement, and they proved that I can't tank two casters and three melee throwing crap under my feet while someone collected reinforcements from the light knows where. They also quit.
The last replacement is decent. 16k or so dps, environmentally unaware and firm in their belief that their paladin tank should use his two interrupts on a six second CD each to handle all incoming spells. I tell them they're sadly misinformed about the paladin tank, but recount shows zero interrupts done by the entire party, which either indiactes a bug or rather awful lag. There's very little QQ in the end. We reform, focus and stuff dies.
So I'm sitting here, firmly reminded why quite a few tanks avoid pugs. To be honest only the first run was an utter disaster, but then I've evolved armour as every true tank does. Being called a retard by players who are unable to do their part doesn't concern me overy much, as long as they produce enough damage to see me further into the instance before they quit.
So, 280 VP and three typical types of pugs. It could be worse.
Sporeggar EU is a backwater realm, so I wasn't too surprised seeing that the AH gaped empty on the upgrade for the second day in a row. The old one would have to serve me for a while longer.
I caved in to the ilevel greed and crafted myself a second Elementium Earthguard, lost a minor amount of CTC as I downgraded my shield from the 353 drop in one of the Zuls. At least I gained some armour and stamina.
I had, as is usually the case early after a content patch, run out of excuses to delay getting on with the VP grinding. It was time for LFD.
Now, I'm sitting on an average ilevel 359 goto raiding set with some 32% avoidance and 60% block. A full tierlevel above the Zuls it means I'm taking a risk when it comes to threat due to Vengeance scaling at glacial speed. At the other hand you never know what cards you will be played concerning the other four people you'll be grouped up with.
I hit Zul'Aman.
I was dealt a silent DK who occasionally managed to break the 10k mark, a healer I never got to measure as I take very little damage, and two people playing the druid class, one who spent most of the time in bear form focussing on something in my tertiary AoE circle and complaining about my tanking.
You see, a paladin tank has a primary target, or circle if you so want. That's the object or objects who receive our single target attacks. We also have a secondary circle consisting of the targets who get hit by our multi target attacks, usually Avenger's Shield, and the occasional direct hit if threat starts running low. Then there is the tertiary circle. Those targets should normally have been the subject of CC during the pull, but if they're not, they only get the attention of our pure AoE damage.
Anyway, as we disgustingly slowly grind our way through the gauntlet to the first boss I find myself both topping the charts an throwing taunts on cooldown. The druids target just about everything in the tertiary circle and then some. I let the worst offender die twice to get a cleaner run. While losing a dps is usually bad, the 6k lost is in effect neglible.
Eventually we hit the boss, and we wipe horribly. I'm aware I'll have problems doing decent damage in my gear, so I'm slightly surprised seeing myself at a steady 10k. That's a pretty good sign the small adds aren't killed fast enough. After the wipe I check my Recount and am stunned. The DK runs 9.5k dps, which places him firmly in the top of the three dps. The druids lumber in at 5.5 and 6.5k respectively.
The 5.5k genious is livid about me not tanking the big eagle carrying away people, and I realise this will be a never ending run unless I get out. I inform the group that boss-fight dps below the tank is unacceptable, and that doing well below 50% of the minimum dps given the gear requirements of the instance is a joke. To my great relief I'm immediately kicked.
The next group is a business minded 13k dps (apart from the berserk 45k AoE hunter who never uttered a word of complaint) and environmentally aware healer. We have a lock who's strangely silent after I expressed my hopes for a better run and referred to the numericals from the previous disaster. After a few trash pulls going slightly slower than I expected one dps reminds me that five players might come in handy at the boss. I'm a bit surprised, but it turns out the lock is AFK, and I never noticed, something I remark upon. My friendly, present, dps links the overall 5k dps delieverd by the lock this far, and he's kicked. Stuff dies, we collect our VP, politely share thanks for a pleasant run and disperse.
I want 280 VP, so a new group it is. It's the usual semi-decent dps never attacking skull and breaking CC gang while complaining about retarded tank. I've grown too old to react on those by now. They usually, and inevitably did, quit halfway through the instance. I got a new set of those as replacement, and they proved that I can't tank two casters and three melee throwing crap under my feet while someone collected reinforcements from the light knows where. They also quit.
The last replacement is decent. 16k or so dps, environmentally unaware and firm in their belief that their paladin tank should use his two interrupts on a six second CD each to handle all incoming spells. I tell them they're sadly misinformed about the paladin tank, but recount shows zero interrupts done by the entire party, which either indiactes a bug or rather awful lag. There's very little QQ in the end. We reform, focus and stuff dies.
So I'm sitting here, firmly reminded why quite a few tanks avoid pugs. To be honest only the first run was an utter disaster, but then I've evolved armour as every true tank does. Being called a retard by players who are unable to do their part doesn't concern me overy much, as long as they produce enough damage to see me further into the instance before they quit.
So, 280 VP and three typical types of pugs. It could be worse.
Friday, June 24, 2011
No Swedes today
If you see one of us from the land where polar bears supposedly walk on the streets of our capital (incorrect, but a rumour we find quite humorous) logged on today, well, that's not a casual.
Today is Midsummer Eve. We're abandoning our proper homes and hitting outdoors venues, usually at some friend or relative who lives sufficiently close to nature. There we'll have an alcohol soaked dinner outdoors. Storms, blazing heat, rain or, if possible, snow, won't change that. Outdoors.
Flimsy plates of paper, flimsy glasses of platic and not so flimsy bottles with strong liquor will all compete to fall of the (you guessed it) flimsy tables we've chosen to drag outdoors for this one day of the year.
Sweden is officially closed. This is the day when network traffic drops by well over 50%.
So I'm writing this well before I plan to marinate myself in 40% alcohol and become incomprehensively incoherent. Sharing this experience with a large part of the local population, and tomorrow most of us will state, in broken voices, we'll never drink again -- just as we did last year, and will do next year again.
So what does this have to do with tanking? Very little, apart from a firm warning that if you do indeed get a Swedish tank later this evening, don't expect much in the form of performance. That the player was able to turn on the computer and type in the password to log on would be about the limit of performance you should expect.
For the occasional national out there. I raise you one. Cheers!
Today is Midsummer Eve. We're abandoning our proper homes and hitting outdoors venues, usually at some friend or relative who lives sufficiently close to nature. There we'll have an alcohol soaked dinner outdoors. Storms, blazing heat, rain or, if possible, snow, won't change that. Outdoors.
Flimsy plates of paper, flimsy glasses of platic and not so flimsy bottles with strong liquor will all compete to fall of the (you guessed it) flimsy tables we've chosen to drag outdoors for this one day of the year.
Sweden is officially closed. This is the day when network traffic drops by well over 50%.
So I'm writing this well before I plan to marinate myself in 40% alcohol and become incomprehensively incoherent. Sharing this experience with a large part of the local population, and tomorrow most of us will state, in broken voices, we'll never drink again -- just as we did last year, and will do next year again.
So what does this have to do with tanking? Very little, apart from a firm warning that if you do indeed get a Swedish tank later this evening, don't expect much in the form of performance. That the player was able to turn on the computer and type in the password to log on would be about the limit of performance you should expect.
For the occasional national out there. I raise you one. Cheers!
Saturday, June 11, 2011
PvP for fun
Can I PvP as a protection paladin?
Yes, but not very well.
Since the nerf to our incessant selfhealing we became a lot less viable in arena. Battlegrounds, however, are a slightly different matter. Especially if we gear up as well as possible.
Now, being well geared isn't the same as showing up in your mid 350 tanking gear and thinking that it'll work. Casters will hand you your rear and even melee will be sadly uncooperative. By cooperative I'm referring to standing in the front of your shield like the targets you usually tank.
You'll need proper PvP gear, and that's easily gained from honor points alone. As we're likely to focus on getting our tanking gear come 4.2 the state of the art PvP equipment won't come fast. However, if you just happen to sit on a few thousand valor points you could as well convert them into their conquest counterpart and get started.
You want exactly the same gear as a retribution paladin, barring a one hander and a shield. Both are, luckily enough, available in PvP versions. Start with a trinket that gets you out of trouble once every two minutes, and try to get the gloves as soon as possible.
Now, somewhere above 3000 resilience the fun in battlegrounds start as a paladin tank. You'll primarily concentrate on carrying flags, defending objectives and tank the ocasional boss fight that occur. The latter is better done in your proper tanking gear though.
You'll soon notice that players are surpricingly easy to taunt. For some reason a lot of people take personal offence at someone who refuses to die instantly. If you back up into a corner you'll even be able to benefit from some of that shield blocking that is part of our normal procedure. However, you can't fight ranged opponents from a cornered position. Those need to be handled by either a corner pull or an outright assault.
Another fun job is the deliberate suicide, especially if you happen to have a healer who likes you. Just head into the thick of things and start using AoE like you were tanking trash. More often than not you'll get the attention of enemy players who start hitting you instead of doing something useful. A few heals are usually enough to keep people occupied for well over half a minute, which is time the opposing team sorely lacks.
Never expect to get a decent kill score. That's not your job when tanking, and that's not your job in PvP. You're there to be a meatshield and a general PITA.
There's even a marginal profit for your tanking to be had if you're inclined to push out as much damage as possible on content you overgear. The PvP gloves add a sweet 5% damage to all your CS attacks.
Also, if you're grinding materials, most likely as a miner, and play on a PvP server, gear with resilience will make ganking you at a node all that much harder. In a one one one match against someone who's hunting players in the open world you're very likely to come out victorious. The main reason isn't that the protection paladin is so fantastic at duels, but rather that gankers tend not to be overly well geared, and as a tank you're already a lot harder to kill to begin with. While you do pitiful damage you can usually just outlast your attacker.
The last, but maybe most important benefit, is that you'll grow a new kind of awareness to your abilities. When to use them, and how to use some that doesn't see as much use when you tank as they ought, well, at least not as a pugging tank. Removing snares, shielding that friendly healer of yours, swapping seals midfight, using trinkets, using potions wisely and pathing.
Pathing is knowing which way you're going to move, before you move. As a protection paladin you're suspectible to all kind of bad things slowing you down, but you move faster than most other players. That makes moving intelligently all that much more important.
Oh, and fighting with the information from your screen. No DBM telling you when to use what abilities. You'll need to act upon a lot more of the graphics that is provided by the game rather than addons.
Now go out and have some fun slamming that shield of yours into the face of other players!
Yes, but not very well.
Since the nerf to our incessant selfhealing we became a lot less viable in arena. Battlegrounds, however, are a slightly different matter. Especially if we gear up as well as possible.
Now, being well geared isn't the same as showing up in your mid 350 tanking gear and thinking that it'll work. Casters will hand you your rear and even melee will be sadly uncooperative. By cooperative I'm referring to standing in the front of your shield like the targets you usually tank.
You'll need proper PvP gear, and that's easily gained from honor points alone. As we're likely to focus on getting our tanking gear come 4.2 the state of the art PvP equipment won't come fast. However, if you just happen to sit on a few thousand valor points you could as well convert them into their conquest counterpart and get started.
You want exactly the same gear as a retribution paladin, barring a one hander and a shield. Both are, luckily enough, available in PvP versions. Start with a trinket that gets you out of trouble once every two minutes, and try to get the gloves as soon as possible.
Now, somewhere above 3000 resilience the fun in battlegrounds start as a paladin tank. You'll primarily concentrate on carrying flags, defending objectives and tank the ocasional boss fight that occur. The latter is better done in your proper tanking gear though.
You'll soon notice that players are surpricingly easy to taunt. For some reason a lot of people take personal offence at someone who refuses to die instantly. If you back up into a corner you'll even be able to benefit from some of that shield blocking that is part of our normal procedure. However, you can't fight ranged opponents from a cornered position. Those need to be handled by either a corner pull or an outright assault.
Another fun job is the deliberate suicide, especially if you happen to have a healer who likes you. Just head into the thick of things and start using AoE like you were tanking trash. More often than not you'll get the attention of enemy players who start hitting you instead of doing something useful. A few heals are usually enough to keep people occupied for well over half a minute, which is time the opposing team sorely lacks.
Never expect to get a decent kill score. That's not your job when tanking, and that's not your job in PvP. You're there to be a meatshield and a general PITA.
There's even a marginal profit for your tanking to be had if you're inclined to push out as much damage as possible on content you overgear. The PvP gloves add a sweet 5% damage to all your CS attacks.
Also, if you're grinding materials, most likely as a miner, and play on a PvP server, gear with resilience will make ganking you at a node all that much harder. In a one one one match against someone who's hunting players in the open world you're very likely to come out victorious. The main reason isn't that the protection paladin is so fantastic at duels, but rather that gankers tend not to be overly well geared, and as a tank you're already a lot harder to kill to begin with. While you do pitiful damage you can usually just outlast your attacker.
The last, but maybe most important benefit, is that you'll grow a new kind of awareness to your abilities. When to use them, and how to use some that doesn't see as much use when you tank as they ought, well, at least not as a pugging tank. Removing snares, shielding that friendly healer of yours, swapping seals midfight, using trinkets, using potions wisely and pathing.
Pathing is knowing which way you're going to move, before you move. As a protection paladin you're suspectible to all kind of bad things slowing you down, but you move faster than most other players. That makes moving intelligently all that much more important.
Oh, and fighting with the information from your screen. No DBM telling you when to use what abilities. You'll need to act upon a lot more of the graphics that is provided by the game rather than addons.
Now go out and have some fun slamming that shield of yours into the face of other players!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
High latency 2
Seeing the latency dropped to around 450 ms I gave tanking five mans a try. To make certain I wouldn't be too much of a liability I hit two of the original Cata heroics.
To give you a reference point, I'm used to around 60 ms latency for actual game data, and as low as 35 ms for chat and other low-intensity WoW-utilities. That would be the world and home data on your interface.
I ran quite a few of the original five mans earlier to test out a threat set of mine, one that hasn't particularily changed since then.
The result was a decent overall 10 - 12k dps no matter which instance I ran. A bit higher if there were numerous groups of mobs, which shouldn't surprise anyone given how the paladin tank does AoE.
While two runs doesn't constitute a statistical sample, a drop to around 8k overall dps seems significant. Obviously I was aware high latency would have a negative impact on my dps (not to mention overall tanking performance), but the rather drastic difference still came as a surprise.
Some of it can be accounted for by a greater damage intake. Ie, I'm slower to move out of The Green Pool of Doom. Hence I'm likely to hit WoG more often than before, and that's one SotR less. Still doesn't account for somewhere between 2 and 4k loss of dps.
So most of that dps loss has to have latency as the culprit, and as a protection paladin I'm not even dependent on a crapton of procs for my attacks. I'm bashing most my abilities in according to a GCD based schedule, and thus I should pretty much be able to keep my rotation intact.
If I lose that much to a mere 0.4 seconds latency overhead, then I don't even want to have nightmares about what it'll do to someone who relies on procs.
To give you a reference point, I'm used to around 60 ms latency for actual game data, and as low as 35 ms for chat and other low-intensity WoW-utilities. That would be the world and home data on your interface.
I ran quite a few of the original five mans earlier to test out a threat set of mine, one that hasn't particularily changed since then.
The result was a decent overall 10 - 12k dps no matter which instance I ran. A bit higher if there were numerous groups of mobs, which shouldn't surprise anyone given how the paladin tank does AoE.
While two runs doesn't constitute a statistical sample, a drop to around 8k overall dps seems significant. Obviously I was aware high latency would have a negative impact on my dps (not to mention overall tanking performance), but the rather drastic difference still came as a surprise.
Some of it can be accounted for by a greater damage intake. Ie, I'm slower to move out of The Green Pool of Doom. Hence I'm likely to hit WoG more often than before, and that's one SotR less. Still doesn't account for somewhere between 2 and 4k loss of dps.
So most of that dps loss has to have latency as the culprit, and as a protection paladin I'm not even dependent on a crapton of procs for my attacks. I'm bashing most my abilities in according to a GCD based schedule, and thus I should pretty much be able to keep my rotation intact.
If I lose that much to a mere 0.4 seconds latency overhead, then I don't even want to have nightmares about what it'll do to someone who relies on procs.
Monday, June 6, 2011
High latency
I'm stuck a long way from home. In Japan to be more exact.
While the local infrastructure is perfectly decent, the overall latency to my EU server definitely leaves a lot to wish for.
So, what should I do at some 800 ms latency?
Raids are right out of the question. While it would be possible to run ten people all guessing what has already happened server side, you can't have your tank being the only one catching up almost a second later.
Grinding five mans for VP I really don't need is an option. I'd just be a sucky tank. There is, however, something that keeps me from deliberately being sucky.
So I guess I'm stuck with doing some dailies, running an occasional instance with a levelling alt and reading up in general. Wait a minute! Didn't I just say I wanted to avoid deliberate suckyness? Well, the primary alt in question is a dps running WotLK content, and there's a limit to how sucky you can be compared to the atrocities you run into. Besides, it's a ranged dps. There's not much in the way of Green Pools of Doom to stand in.
While the local infrastructure is perfectly decent, the overall latency to my EU server definitely leaves a lot to wish for.
So, what should I do at some 800 ms latency?
Raids are right out of the question. While it would be possible to run ten people all guessing what has already happened server side, you can't have your tank being the only one catching up almost a second later.
Grinding five mans for VP I really don't need is an option. I'd just be a sucky tank. There is, however, something that keeps me from deliberately being sucky.
So I guess I'm stuck with doing some dailies, running an occasional instance with a levelling alt and reading up in general. Wait a minute! Didn't I just say I wanted to avoid deliberate suckyness? Well, the primary alt in question is a dps running WotLK content, and there's a limit to how sucky you can be compared to the atrocities you run into. Besides, it's a ranged dps. There's not much in the way of Green Pools of Doom to stand in.
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