Pacing Gear Replacing

Greenraven's first level 80 heroic 5-man was a bit of an embarrassment.  Recount says that I did about 1.4K DPS on that run.  Back in early 2009 when the content was new, having your lowest DPS come in at 1.4K meant that you were probably in for a smooth run.  Today, that number meant that the tank was doing twice as much damage as I was, to say nothing of the other DPS in the group.

Two days later, my gearscore is up to the mid-3000's and my DPS is consistently at or above 2.2K.  A large portion of this increase came from a single lucky weapon drop, that allowed me to replace an old ilvl 171 blue sword from DTK normal with an epic ilvl 219 mace.  (I'd rate the new hammer 3rd best in the 5-man game for an Arms warrior, behind only the axe from Heroic Pit of Saron and Quel'Delar, which I would frankly sell rather than claim on an alt this close to an expansion.)

Obviously, it's at least somewhat fun to see the numbers piling up at such a rapid pace.  Due to Wrath's massive gear inflation, even the Hunter and Tank gear that drops in the newer instances is generally an upgrade.   At the same time, the pacing of this gear upgrade bonanza only emphasizes the complaint that I've had about Wrath's 5-man game for a while now; it is set up as a way to provide players with entry level raid gear, rather than as a legitimate game in its own right. 

Within a week or so, I expect to have picked off almost all of the upgrades from heroic loot tables.  After that, it's a question of how much effort I'm prepared to spend on grinding out tokens and repeating the last dungeon or two that offers significant upgrades.  With no plans to raid and an expansion gear reset looming, the answer is almost certainly going to be "not that much". 


RNG vs Tokens in the Zerg Era

The irony is that I would have been prepared to spend far more time working on a weapon upgrade, precisely because it is such big deal for Warrior DPS.  Instead, I won the weapon I will probably carry into Cataclysm on the very first attempt, while the guy who tanked on that same instance run bemoaned having killed the final boss dozens of times in search of a shield that just wasn't dropping.  Such is the blessing and the curse of having the random number generator decide on loot - some players win the best upgrades too quickly while others end up no longer enjoying the grind. 

I recognize that there is a psychological advantage to obtaining your item outright, especially if you have pursued it for longer than I had.  You're not going to be as excited to get the same loot in exchange for your 60th token, especially if the token comes from something anticlimactic like zerging down trivial content.  Even so, I wonder if the RNG really serves any useful purpose in the modern WoW 5-man game. 

The big strength of the system is that you can click on the random button and land in one of sixteen dungeons, some of which you probably have not seen in weeks.  When you've cleaned out all but that one last upgrade, you're reduced to repeating the same one dungeon, an exercise that will either be a complete win or an equally complete failure.  Running the dungeon until the thing finally drops isn't really difficult given how quick dungeon runs are and how likely they are to succeed.  The only thing that random loot accomplishes in the modern version of WoW 5-mans is to lock you out of the other fifteen dungeons, reducing the variety and ultimately the quality of the experience. 

Introductory Tanking Experience

My warrior finally hit level 80, so I've now got the levels I would need to tank.  With the gear I'm getting from random dungeons I run as DPS, I've got the stats I would need to tank.  With dual spec, I've got the tools I would need to tank without having to sacrifice solo and DPS options. 

The challenge, then, is getting the personal experience I would need to actually know how to tank.  This is one area where the game comes up pretty short at the moment.

Off-tanking some trash
Like many good PUG stories, the Gun'Drak run crisis began with a hunter's pet.  The hunter maintained that the healer was responsible for keeping his pet alive and the tank (who claimed to have a "top Shaman healer" as one of his other characters) took the hunter's side.   The mage and I just tried to get the the tank and the healer to tolerate each other for the ten minutes it would have taken to clear the dungeon, since, as DPS, we would have been staring at lengthy queues to find a new group.  Unfortunately, after squabbling our way through three of the four bosses, bickering over whether it's okay to need a blue item that no one wanted for off-set, and a failed vote kick attempt, the tank decided to pull a group of mobs and then drop group.

As the highest DPS party member, aggro fell directly on my Bladestorming shoulders, and the healer was apparently good enough to keep an Arms warrior in battle stance carrying a two-handed weapon alive, because we survived the pull.  The remaining group members suggested that I should try to tank the rest of the dungeon in case we couldn't get a replacement, so I switched over to my tanking spec and gear and made my first ever pull as the tank of an instance group.  As it happened, the group finder got us a replacement tank shortly thereafter, but my curious lack of failure in this brief role tempted me to see what exactly I could do.

Looking for easy mode
In all likelihood, there will never be another dungeon I know quite so well as Utgarde Keep; the first dungeon of the expansion, it was also the easiest heroic and therefore the most reliable source of emblems back before 5-mans became a playground for bored and overgeared raiders.  At level 79, with a gearscore around 2.5K in my tanking set, I was way above what should be needed to tank the level 70-72 normal mode of this dungeon, so it seemed like the safest possible way to give tanking a chance. 

I queued up and was shocked to get a group before I had even finished switching over to my tanking setup.  Off we went.  Realistically, I had set a very low bar for myself to see if I could physically find the buttons needed to tank stuff.  Apparently I passed that basic standard, as we burned through the dungeon with no deaths and minimal if any cases of loose mobs running after other players. 

Next up, I queued to try the Brewfest boss.  In terms of absolute difficulty, this should have been a relatively attainable goal, as that fight is not especially challenging.  Unfortunately, this otherwise easy content is a bit harder to tank in a PUG precisely BECAUSE it is too easy.  My first attempt at a group had started and nearly finished the event before I even finished zoning in.  The second time, I bungled badly because someone has to talk to the boss to get him to attack, and I somehow lost track of him in the commotion.  The third time I actually managed to pick up the boss, but all-our DPS from raid-geared players pulled him off.  Because the fight is so easy, none of these resulted in a wipe, and therefore no one had any reason to slow their attacks for a noob tank. 

Back up to the high end
My curiosity was mostly satisfied, so I went back to work on the last few bubbles of exp I needed for level 80 as a DPS.  Then disaster struck in the Halls of Lightning.

My queue number came up as a replacement for someone who dropped after a wipe.  The tank was clearly new and struggling.  Given my own inexperience, I would have been happy to be patient with him, but he had apparently had enough, and quit without a word after a wipe on the third boss.  I warned the group that I was inexperienced but offered to try tanking the rest of the dungeon, figuring that the worst that could happen would be a group disband (which they were considering before I offered to tank). 

HOL was the hardest of the 5-mans at Wrath's launch, and features lots of AOE splash damage.  At Wrath's launch, players were required to do a variety of things to avoid this damage (e.g. the person who is giving off damaging sparks should run away from the rest of the group), but it started to become standard practice to ignore these mechanics and try to heal through them as players got more geared.  The challenge is less about holding aggro and more about somehow staying alive and doing enough damage to kill the bosses before the healer runs out of mana.  In other words, definitely not an ideal training ground for new players. 

Anyway, we gave it a shot and ultimately cleared the instance with me tanking.  I am very unfamiliar with defensive stance in general, and found myself scrambling for cooldowns I barely even knew I had just to stay alive long enough for the healer to get back to me (while also keeping the DPS up).  On both of the boss fights I tanked, my self-heals from herbalism and alchemy were the difference between life and death.  We wiped once, on trash, because I was standing in the wrong place (having always done this dungeon as a ranged attacker) and got several groups of adds, but overall it was about as great of a success as anyone could have hoped for. 

Training day?
I don't really plan to continue on as a tank on this character.  I am glad that I tried it, though, because the challenges were not what I expected. 

As a DPS, I figured that holding aggro would be hard, because the thing that I notice is when I produce more threat than the tank and the mob comes to kill me.   As a tank, I found that I never really had trouble holding down a mob against comparably geared players. 

The thing that really challenged me was the reactives - where to stand, when to move, what buttons to press in what situations.  Part of this is due to WoW's health pool design, which is currently far too heavily weighted towards massive damage spikes - Cataclysm promises to revamp the system to make survival and healing more a matter of strategy, though time will tell how they succeed. 

The bigger design problem, though, is that there is no way to learn this system other than to try (and possibly/probably fail) to tank for real live groups of other players.  Cataclysm may worsen this aspect of learning to tank because the game will be shifting to a more rigid sub-class-like system where solo builds will not see even the basic tanking tools.  There really needs to be some way for me to learn what I need to know without screwing over four other players by showing up and claiming that I can serve as their tank when that could not be further from the truth. 

PVD On The Multiverse

The latest episode of The Multiverse is out, and, if you've been waiting for years to hear the sound of my voice, your day has arrived.  Apparently I use about as many words when I'm on a podcast as I do when I'm writing a blogpost, so listeners can expect to hear me rambling on for a significant portion of the episode's hundred minutes.  Major topics include the prospects of Cataclysm, the state of EQ2, the role of the subscription in the future of MMO's, and a very special message for John Smedley. 

I'd like to thank Ferrel and Chris for having me on the show (and express my regrets for having missed out on Riknas).  The Multiverse at its core is a bunch of knowledgeable, intelligent bloggers sitting around and talking about our favorite hobby, and they were very welcoming for this podcasting newbie. 

I'll also say that it's a bit odd being on a podcast that you actually listen to, because you're used to hearing their voices and you might even talk back occasionally, but they don't usually hear you when you do.  Regardless, it sounds like I was reasonably coherent, even though I was a bit flustered at the top of the show after the two of them spent several minutes talking about how great they think I am or something.  /blush  I'd visit this show again anytime.

I would like to echo the shout-outs I made on the air to DDO Cast, LOTRO Reporter, and EQ2 Wire for being tremendous resources on their respective games.  I really do rely on these sites for the in-depth coverage that I need to stay on top of the news while juggling so many games.

Anyway, head on over to Vagary.tv to listen to the episode!

Northrend Dungeonmaster Revisited

With Cataclysm fast approaching, I'm working on my pre-expansion "bucket list" - things that won't be possible (or at least won't mean as much) whenever the expansion finally arrives.  Over the weekend, I crossed off one of the major goals, attaining the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement on my Horde warrior alt.  I finished this achievement on my main over a year and a half ago, and times have changed significantly.

• Back in the days before the dungeon finder, I ended up leveling to 80 without ever finding a group for most of the expansion's dungeons - for a decent number of them, I earned my first clear on heroic mode.  My warrior, on the other hand, finished the dungeon tour with half a bubble of exp to go before hitting level 79, having cleared each zone as the mobs became level-appropriate targets (generally a level or two behind the dungeon finder's minimum requirements, which are a bit generous). 
  
  
• The new system also awards two of the soon-to-be-defunct emblems of triumph for completing your first random non-heroic dungeon of the day.  This netted me 32 emblems and over 100 stone keeper shards, a decent head start on level 80 gear (and/or heirlooms for Horde alts). 
  
  
• Many players were tremendously overgeared for the content, leaving it extremely easy.  In some cases, I'd see multiple level 80's with 5K gearscores (the PUG community threshold for the game's final raid instance, not entry level single group content).  The final dungeon run I finished for the achievement was "healed" by a Feral Druid with a gearscore in the mid-6000's who would occasionally pop out of cat form to throw a renew on the tank. 

In principle, this system provided me with a valuable opportunity to get experience with group content prior to the game's level cap.  In practice, though, I'm not sure that I've been taught especially good behavior.  Some tanks were able to hold aggro even if I ran in and hit Bladestorm on the pull.  Some healers were able to keep me up even if I did manage to get one or more mobs' attention.  This is poor form, but so is coming in behind the tank on the DPS meter in the eyes of many PUGs. 

Blizzard is promising increased difficulty in the dungeons of Cataclysm, but it will be very interesting to see whether and how they are able to deliver.  The difference in item levels between the gear my warrior will have in hand as a freshly dinged 80 and top end raid loot is literally over 100.   If Cataclysm actually does deliver significant increased difficulty, undergeared PUGS may be painful or even impossible in the early days of the expansion. 

The good news is that Blizzard has managed to actually convince me to spend a significant amount of my time while logged into an MMO in actual groups with actual other players.  In terms of both exp and loot, 5-man content is significantly more rewarding than solo quests (ironic given that other, more group-focused games fall short of this bar).  The question is whether they will end up regretting the way in which they got there.