This morning, as is my usual habit, I tried to log into WoW from the computer in our library at home. Instead of the normal “Authentication Successful” message, a larger splash screen popped up, telling me that my account had been locked due to a detected “change in play pattern.” Now, my pattern is highly predictable. I normally play on the computer in my home library mornings and evenings, on my office work computer at lunchtime, and on my home office computer weekends, with rare forays on my laptop. That’s it; four computers, three of which never go anywhere. What could have changed?

Well, here’s the thing: on Tuesday evening, I was having problems staying connected. I didn’t think anything of it; rolling restarts on the servers frequently indicate server-side patches, and those frequently mean new bugs. Wednesday, one of my co-workers mentioned he had the same problem, but the third member of our lunch crowd said he hadn’t noticed anything.

What if those connection problems were caused by some account thief attempting to log into my (and my co-worker’s) account? Failing, of course, as he doesn’t have our authenticators, but still trying? Attempted logins from an unusual location (like, for example, China) qualify as a “change in play pattern.”

So this morning, I carefully typed the URL shown in the “account locked” popup (in Google Chrome, because Internet Explorer is about as secure as a tissue-paper bank vault), went through the rigamarole to change my password (this time using a more-secure randomized string), and logged in to play. The whole thing wasted about half of my normal early-morning play time (and prevented me from testing a particular add-on for the Emporium), but none of my Horde toons have been robbed. I should have checked the Alliance, too, I guess. I’ll do that later today.

Bottom line: If you don’t have an Authenticator, for your own sake, get one! I am certain that’s the only thing that kept my account from being stolen. And after you get it, if it’s the keyfob style, photocopy the serial number on the back and store that copy someplace safe, away from the computer and the Authenticator.

Use a “secure” password, one that you never use for anything else, at least eight characters long, mixed letters and numbers. Make it random if you can do that and still remember it. Write it down (yes, I know you’re always told “don’t write it down”) and put the slip of paper in your wallet. If you lose your wallet, your WoW password is a very minor problem, trust me.

And if you aren’t using Gmail for your main email address, open an account there now (it’s still free), and change your Battle.net information to point there. Gmail is very, very good at detecting “phishing” spam. I get around six spams every day that pretend to be from Blizzard. They never are. Gmail properly identifies them as phishing every time, with a large red banner across the top of the email. Granted, it also flagged the legitimate email from Blizzard this morning as “spam,” but it did NOT call it phishing. If anyone is interested, I can tell you how to identify the real source of an email; it’s pretty easy.

Be paranoid; this is the Internet, and they really are out to get you.

Oh, and have you ever been curious where those “we heard you like to sell your Wow Account, Dawg” emails that pretend to be from Blizzard would take you if you followed the link? If you’re using OpenDNS, this is what you’d get (and even if you are, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! I am a computer professional; I have years of experience to help me stay safe.):

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Not to be overly academic, but WoW and Blizzard have essentially formed a relationship with each and every one of their consumers. We have developed norms with the way we interact with each other and when those norms get violated it is always very difficult to navigate a recovery process. I have often said in private to Jason and others that I now feel like Blizzard/WoW and I are navigating a rough stage in our relationship. It’s like when your partner/spouse tell you that they don’t love you anymore but because you so deeply love them you want to try to work it out… I feel like Blizzard/WoW is the partner/spouse who doesn’t love me as a player and a consumer anymore. Yet, my devotion to the game remains even despite its best efforts to get rid of me.

So here is my two cents on what is wrong in WoW, and what Blizzard should do to fix it.

Raiding
I know a lot of you probably cringe when I say that I believe the first tier of Cataclysm raiding is far too difficult for the majority of the player base. I’ll agree that Naxx and Obsidium Sanctum in Wrath were quite easy especially considering that I was able to complete both within 2 ½ months of Wrath’s launch (and I had to level my DK from level 55 in that time). I was also a young and new raider at that time, I knew very little about past raiding ventures and wasn’t experienced in the ways of classic and BC raiding, but I tried my best and did my research and though it wasn’t too terribly difficult it was still time consuming and fun… and I could learn. After all isn’t learning what the first tier of content for an expansion should be all about. So after having done my fair share of heroic modes in ICC, ToC, and Ulduar, and having 2+ years of raiding and raid leading experience under my belt jumping into Cataclysm raiding should have felt like ok… new fights… but lets do this. Instead it feels like everything I learned about raiding has been shattered and crapped on and Blizzard ratcheted the games difficulty up so much that even a now highly skilled player like myself (topping charts even when I pug in with hardcore guilds and players) feels like a complete and utter scrub and I’m left throwing my hands up in the air like did the last 2 years mean nothing?

Finally, this notion of being “spoiled” by a video game is utterly ridiculous in my book. Games are supposed to be fun, and completable by people with some challenge mixed in. Wrath was a challenge for many players but with enough work and effort even if it took them longer they got to do the content, not hard modes, but normal modes. Hard modes are for the hardcore, normal modes are for everyone who has the time and effort to put in. Blizzard should strive to give the hard core players better and more unique loot so they can feel that hard modes really do prove that they’re leet and they have something unique to show for it (not some recolored same model from an easy boss), but still make the loot for normal modes look appropriately cool (just not as cool as hard mode stuff). That’s the way I think it should run.

Dynamic Content
For all intensive purposes Azeroth is about as static of a world as you can get in an MMO. I’ve been a vehement defender of Blizzard on a lot of fronts, but this upsets me now more than ever that I see a number of lesser funded and developed MMO’s having dynamic content.

Take for instance the rifts and invasions in Rift… open world PVE content that actually gives you something for completing them (Rifts version of Justice Points). They encourage players to cooperate and are challenging but do not end up causing players to have to inspect each other’s gear/spec or anything like that before tackling them. Sure it might be slower than raiding or dungeoning… but it’s fun. No stress I get to join a public group of random people and go pwn some monsters and get stuff. The best part is… hardly anyone is judgmental or mean in those groups. Everyone has this attitude of “Yeah! Let’s do this!” You die… so what… run back and keep fighting the good fight. Why doesn’t Blizzard have something like this? In Wrath it could have been scourge invasions of towns and quest hubs or out in the world. In Cataclysm, it could easily work as Twilight Cult invasions… Imagine cultists overrunning Crossroads or Goldshire randomly, or your out running your dailies in Twilight Highlands and uh oh Dragonmaw Port is under attack by a swarm of cultists and twilight drakes so you and everyone else in the zone go rush to fight it off. Click a “Join Public Group” button and go in and save the day. I’m telling you… it could work and in Azeroth it would be awesome.

Community
I’m not sure if this is because of the content or just the maturity of the game but the player base of WoW is unbelievably judgmental and terribly inconsiderate and rude. In Wrath I used to see people pugging raids and dungeons all the time because it was fun even if you didn’t complete the dungeon. Now on a Friday night I log in and barely see anyone talking in Trade Chat… not even the obligatory “Baby” or “Murloc” memes. It’s like a ghost town…. no one wants to talk… no one is pugging. It feels for lack of a better word… empty or hollow.

Not to mention when you do finally get to the stage of getting into a pug or some other groups activity. You are under constant pressure to perform (spec, rotation, gear, ability) and at the first sign of trouble you’re kicked or not invited. Though I realize this is an ever-present and necessary trend in any group wanting to get stuff done, ratcheting up the game’s difficulty has increased the amount of scrutiny given to players and even friends that you have raided with for 2 years… who are good players! Is that what Blizzard wants to do to their community? Punishing people who enjoy playing together by making it so that they can barely get down 2 bosses a week? Making it so that you have to berate your friends about gameplay mechanics when I know that they know what to do? I urge Blizzard not to sacrifice the most important aspect of their game, the community, for the sake of appeasing the few people who enjoy excluding others from the fun, the others whose sense of accomplishment is directly related to the failure of others.

I recall Chris Metzen, in his “Geek Is” statements at Blizzcon 2010 talking about Dungeons and Dragons… and saying “Geek is sitting around a table with your best friends… armed with only graph paper and funny dice… and imagining far flung worlds of your own.” He even said that that was his favorite slide. For me “Geek Is” spending an evening raiding with my best friends enjoying jokes and downing bosses with minimal stress… still requiring skill and a few wipes… but minimal stress. Why does it now feel like Blizzard doesn’t want me to do this anymore?

Are there any people out there who aren’t experiencing these woes? Is it confined to my server? Is it just a random series of events that has plagued me as of late? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I ask for help and your opinions. Please keep in mind these are my experiences and opinions and they may be very different from your own. I encourage respectful and intelligent disagreements, but don’t want to see any ignorant comments about “how I suck” or “qq” etc.

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I wondered, how unusual am I? The best comparison would be to others in my circumstance: married with kids and a responsible job, do you play other games with any seriousness?

I’m in a similar circumstance to Gravity. I’m married with kids, and have a full time job. My daughter is a 4th grader so we have all kinds of extra cirrciular activities she’s involved in like Soccer, Band, and Awana.

I’ve been playing WoW for over 4 years now. In that time I haven’t really played any other games with any kind of seriousness.

Now occasionally, I’ll fire up an old game I have like Civilization IV or Knights of the Old Republic. It’s like visiting an old friend for a while and those games are still fun even years after their release. I still fire up Madden 2008. Actually I would have kept playing and buying the new Madden every single year, but EA decided to stop making Madden for the PC. I guess they decided they didn’t need my money anymore.

I play around a little bit with Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, but I’m so behind on those games that I just get dominated on Battlenet so I don’t play them much anymore.

I’m pretty much a One Game Man these days. That may change in 2010, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

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The purchasable minipets continue to cause a storm across the blogosphere. I’ve already mentioned them here and here, but rather than offer another analysis on the Pandaren Monk as I did with Lil’ K.T. I’m just going to offer one finally post on it and then I’m leaving these two alone.

I don’t care what fears people have about Blizzard offering other things in the future (they can go ahead and put T5695 gear up for sale for all I care), as far as I’m concerned that is in no way a valid argument for anything.

The only argument I have found that is valid to any degree is not so much an argument as it is a failure to understand: How can you justify spending $20 on two pets?

To even things out a bit, let’s forget about the $5 donation to the MaWF and just look at it as a flat $20 price tag here with no further bells and whistles.

Cost Analysis
Actual Cost: One Pet
Most people are looking at this: $10 = 1 pet

What most of them are failing to see is that it actually works out to this: $10 = 50 pets

Which means the actual cost is: $0.20 = 1 pet

The reason for this is because each of these pets is a BoA item that is mailed to every character you have and every character you make in the future. Each account is able to have 50 total characters across all servers, and every one of them gets this pet for the same fee. Now, not everyone is so much an altoholic as my wife and I (both of us have had to delete toons for having reached the 50 toon limit), so not everyone is going to be able to see it that way. But, some people are as bad as I am, or even worse, and they actually get an even better deal than twenty cents a pop.

For the sake of consistency though, we’ll go with a maximum of 50 toons.

Actual Cost: Both Pets
Alright, lets open it up a bit and throw that second pet in there.

Most people see this: $20 = 2 pets

What they miss: $20 = 100 pets

Actual Cost: $0.20 = 1 pet

Now, the math here obviously comes out to the exact same thing because the cost is the same in both cases. We double the cost, but we also double the quantity purchased.

Perspective
To put that into perspective a bit, let us change what we’re purchasing to nails instead of vanity pets. As with any example, it’s not going to be perfect and any trolls can come by and chew on my nails if they want. Yes, nails are real world items that can serve a purpose and be functional, but that’s not the point. Read with the intent to understand, not with the intent to respond.

Example: We’re going to say that you just bought a beautiful Asian painting. The details of the painting aren’t important, but if you’re really interested I’ll tell you that it depicts a monk. You need to hang it on your wall, but you don’t have any nails. So you go to the store to buy a nail and find out that they don’t sell nails individually, they only come in two varieties and they only come in boxes of 50. Either nail would work, but the picture will hang a bit differently with one than it will with the other, and both ways appeal to you.

You aren’t sure which nail is going to suit you the best, but you know that you could probably find uses for either type. You also know that you only need a single nail, but having several might come in handy later on down the road. If you could buy a single nail for $0.20 then you would prefer to do that, but sadly the store doesn’t allow such purchases. So you have to decide whether you want one type of nail, or both types of nails, and you have to deal with the fact that you may very well be buying more nails than you’ll ever use.

My decision was to buy both types of nails and see which style of hanging appealed to me more, knowing that I could change between both styles of hanging whenever I wanted to by switching out one type of nail for the other.

Conclusion
The point of me breaking this down for you isn’t to try to convince you to change your mind on whether or not to buy them, the point is to open your mind a bit to help you see a clearer picture of what you’re actually buying. In essence, you aren’t just going to a store to buy yourself a nail, you’re going to a store and buying a box of nails. Whether or not you decide to use them all is up to you. You may only need a single nail to hang up that nice picture on your wall, but you’re buying a whole box that’s available for you to use if you have a want or need to do so.

How you justify the cost is dependent on how you chose to look at it. Did you spend $20 on a single nail, or did you spend $20 on a box that has 100 nails in it? The answer is up to you; it’s all in how you choose to look at it.

I didn’t spend $20 to buy my wife 2 pets, I spent $20 to buy my wife 100 pets, and she’s enjoying every one.

Posted in World of Warcraft Tagged: BoA, Microtransactions, Purchase, Vanity Pets

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Basically the best way for Blizzard to address the high avoidance problem is to remove Plate Tank gear in the next expansion, and put all Tanks in the same position of sharing DPS gear that Druids find themselves in today.

The first steps towards this have already been taken by Blizzard’s announcement at Blizzcon that Defense is going away in Cataclysm. All Tanks will have a Survival of the Fittest type talent that makes you uncrittable. So already we won’t see any Plate in Cataclysm with Defense.

Defense adds Parry and Dodge so already Cataclysm tanks will have lower avoidance. But it won’t be enough. Let me show you why.

A naked Level 80 Blood Elf Paladin has nearly 11% avoidance, and that doesn’t factor in another percentage or two from the 400 defense you get. (Every character gets 5 defense per level.) So already we’re at nearly 13% avoidance. Combine that with talents like Deflection and Anticipation and a Tank is already sporting near 25% before he puts on his first piece of gear. Let’s add in some raid buffs like Kings and Mark of the Wild. Let’s also debuff the Boss with a hit debuff like Insect Swarm or Scorpid Sting which gives the Tank 3% more avoidance.

We can see that before you add one lick of Dodge or Parry from gear, a tank is already at or near 30% avoidance. This is actually MORE than GC said he’d like to see in the first tier of Cataclysm raids.

So what if, as Rohan suggested, the Developers do not put any Parry or Dodge on Cataclysm tank gear.

Then what stats do you have left to put on the ‘tank’ gear?

Yes, there are ‘block’ stats. Remember that the Developers are also changing Block to be a flat percentage, so we don’t know how Block Rating/Block Value will work.

If we ignore Block for the moment, or assume Block will scale off of Strength, then what does that leave us with?

Expertise, Hit, and Strength.

What’s remarkable about those stats? Yep, they are ALSO DPS stats. In fact, the only DPS stat you are missing is Critical Strike.

Now, how could we address Critical Strike in a way that would work for both DPS and Tanks?

What if we put Critical Strike on gear in the form of Agility? Now the Plate gear in Cataclysm is itemized with Strength, Hit, Expertise, and Agility. It should work for both Tanks and DPS. So in the same way that Rogues and Ferals share DPS Leather, Plate Tanks and Plate DPS can share all Plate gear. There would be much less ‘wasted’ gear in raids, and less gear to clutter up the loot tables.

Tanks will still prefer one handers while most Plate DPS wants two handers. Tanks will still be the only ones going for Shields, at which point it might make more sense to put them on vendors considering that only 1 spec of 2 classes even uses Tank shields.

So how would this affect avoidance? I believe it would keep Avoidance from going up too much each raid tier and the Developers can better keep it under control. If it starts to get away from them, they can tweak the Agility to Dodge conversion again like they did earlier in Wrath.

So what do you think? Would the ‘Druid’ solution work for Plate Tanks?

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Greetings all! This is Derevka from Tales of a Priest. Yes I did close the doors at Tales, (mainly due to work being much more demanding of my time during the day, and our firewall at work now blocking blogger access) but I mentioned that I do miss blogging a bit, so Seri asked me to do a guest post here at Snarkcraft.

In the spirit of Snarkcraft, I really should try to make this post as snarky as possible. So I am going to discuss the in game feature that I am looking forward to the most. No, it is not killing Arthas and slapping that rather constipated expression right off his face… its Inter-Faction Race Changes.

This has been something I have been looking forward to for a long time. I know some people are rather upset by it because of the lore involved. How can you change your character’s RACE when you’ve been living and experiencing that race’s lore for 4+ years? To those I reply with, quite easily… you stare at the back of a female dwarf for 4 years and tell me that again. (I know I’ll be hated by the dorf lovers in this post… but I am shallow and like pretty things, so I’m looking forward to my visit to the plastic surgeon… a little snip here, a tuck there, an ‘augmentation’ over here…

I rolled a Female Dwarf Priest back in Vanilla for the sole reason of Fear Ward. The priest class back then, was the only class that had not only Racial Abilities but Race Based spells (Desperate Prayer, Fear Ward, Devouring Plague, LOLFeedback) Back in Vanilla you actually NEEDED Fear Ward on the Alliance side. You didn’t have Tremor Totems on Ally, and you needed fear protection for Ony, BWL, and MC.

Then enter Burning Crusade, and Space Goats were also given Fear Ward… but there weren’t many fights that had the opportunity to cast it. (Nightbane and Maulgar are the only 2 I can think of). Then Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, decided to dole out Fear Ward to every priest. At that point, Vanilla WoW Dorf Priests looked around and /boggled.

Fast Forward to today, I’ve changed Gender to Male Dwarf because I simply couldn’t stand staring at “my humps my humps my humps….” anymore. I’ve been checking my Blue Tracker and even logging into the Account Management screen daily hoping to see the “Paid Race Change” to lose that taunting “Coming Soon” tag that is branded next to it. Hell, I’ve even clicked it a few times hoping it would somehow let me go through.

Some people view this as just another way for Blizzard to make money off of the player base. Just keep milking that dying cash cow. While I do tend to agree with them, I will happily spend that money in a heartbeat. It’ll be a change of pace… visually making the game look newer. No more having to rush to the front of a Guild Screenshot so I’m not completely blotted out by a Night Elf. No more twirling braids, or big bushy beards. No more oven mitt sized gloves. No more blow up doll facial expression when doing an Omni Cast. (look at a Female Dwarf spamming Inner Fire, and you’ll see it)  Soon I will have a Female Draenei ’stretching magic’ casting animation… and not to mention a rather hoofed-yet-sexy physique to go along with it.

Why Draenei? Why not Human? Yes, for PVE Healing, Human is generally the Alliance best bet for Every Man For Himself, Faction Bonuses, and Human Spirit 3% spirit bonus. Mine is purely aesthetic, and the fact that my toon’s name is Derevka. (Which is a spin on the villainess family from the TV Series ALIAS – so having the Eastern European accent on my toon only seems fitting.) Now, if only the /dance animation was to “Single Ladies”…

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The opposition to having the World of Warcraft movie focus around the Lich King said that this would be a movie that has already been done before. While this may be somewhat true, the story of Arthas and his rise in becoming the Lich King is probably one of the most popular stories in all of Warcraft lore. The book was immensely popular and the story line itself just lends itself perfectly to the feature film format.

I’m very excited to see how the film develops but with Sam Raimi as director and Robert Rodat (The Patriot, Saving Private Ryan) as the head writer. It looks to be very promising and Blizzard is working very hard to keep this movie from being the ultimate letdown.

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The developers did a fantastic job with Wrath of the Lich King. My wildest hopes and dreams for the Expansion were actually realized. Paladins are now full fledged members of the tanking team across the game. We have two real cool downs, a real taunt, well itemized gear. We got a Shield Slam and some unique mechanics like Sacred Shield and Ardent Defender.

Paladins can now stand toe to toe, not only with ANY raid boss in the game, but also against any other tanking class in the game.

Raiding opened up and now 10 man Raiders can experience all of the raid game.

Best of all, I haven’t been asked to spec Holy ONE TIME since I installed Wrath.

After some initial turmoil, the guild situation in Wrath turned out to be better than I could have hoped. Boston ended up creating the exact guild I always wanted to be a part of. It’s a bunch of good, mature guys and gals who have fun online and kill stuff. I can’t wait to go kill Arthas with those guys and gals.

So after getting just about everything I could have wanted out of Wrath, what would I like to see in Cataclysm?

Schism

Take the inelegant solution. Balance the game and abilities so they can work in both Arenas even if they have to work differently. It will improve the experience for both PVE and PVP.

Sanctuary

Blessing of Sanctuary is no longer a Blessing but simply a self buff, perhaps even rolled into Righteous Fury. The Developers have put the 10% stamina and then 10% strength on BoSanct to try to get Paladins to use it over Kings, but we still dig the avoidance from Agility. Is that next, 10% Agi? At that point it really just is Improved Kings. Other tanks have their Rage from Avoidance talent and do not have to choose between BoKings and getting Rage from Avoidance. Paladins shouldn’t have to make that choice either.

Interrupt Me

A short cool down, off the global cool down interrupt. One of the things I’ve come to love about my new Blood Elf is Arcane Torrent. It’s the off the global cool down interrupt I’ve always wanted on my Paladin. The problem is that it has a 2 minutes cooldown. Interrupts remain one of the main weaknesses of Paladin Tanks (and to be fair Druids also suffer here). You can see this clearly on fights like Jarraxxus or General Vezzax. You want a tank with a reliable, short cool down interrupt that is off the global cooldown for those fights.

Close the Gap

One of my favorite things about my Warrior alt is the mobility of Charge. Paladins need a gap closer. We have some fantastic ranged tools but sometimes you really need to be at a certain place RIGHT NOW. Some sort of Holy Charge would be fantastic. Warbringer is a very fun dynamic on my Warrior and I’ve love to see that on my Paladin.

Proc Me

I’d like to see something added to Paladins to would break up our metronome rotation: 9-6-9-6-9, 2, 3, 4, 9-6-9-6-9, 2, 3, 4. Let me again point to my Warior alt and the talent Sword and Board. This is a proc that finishes the cool down of a Warrior’s Shield Slam move. Giving something like this to Paladins would help to break up our rotation. Perhaps borrowing something like Art of War from our Retribution brothers would be a nice addition here.

My secret hope is that it would also allow some differentiation based on skill between two Paladin tanks, and add some complexity to the class. Although my experience is limited with Death Knights and Druids, I would guess that Paladins are probably the easiest of the 4 tanks to learn. This can be great for new tanks, but some of us vets who’ve been doing the Tankadin thing since before Mt. Hyjal are itching for something more.

Challenge Me

Paladins need an AoE taunt akin to Challenging Shout or Challenging Roar. The closest thing we have is Righteous Defense which can taunt up to 3 targets, as long as all three are targeting the same person.

AD For All

While the Guardian Spirit ‘Save’ should remain the Paladin’s 2nd cool down, I’d really like to see some version of Ardent Defender given to Druids and Warriors. Death Knights have an AD like skill with Will of the Necropolis. I am of the opinion that the 4 Tank classes will continue to be difficult to balance as long as AD is only in the tool belt of half those tanks. With AD across the board, the tanks can be more easily balanced and encounter designers would have a better idea of exactly what they could throw in an encounter to challenge any tank.

No Spell Power Plate

I want to see the end of Spell Power plate. I don’t have the first clue how you pull this off. Perhaps the easiest solution would be an armor multiplier deep in the Holy tree and then encourage Paladins to roll on Resto Shaman mail, which seems to get wasted nearly as much as Spell Power plate, at least in the raids I attend.

No More ‘Badge’ Gear

Now hear me out on this one before you go rushing for the Comment button. Instead of making and itemizing separate gear, allow the gear that drops from bosses to be purchased with Emblems. One of the problems that emblems were supposed to solve was that you couldn’t get a particular drop you needed from a particular boss. So put those specific drops on the vendors and when you run the dungeon 12 times and it doesn’t drop, then you can go buy it.

Fix Retribution

Ret should be one of the easiest specs to balance. They don’t have a complicated resource loop like Rage, or Energy. They have a fairly predictable rotation, and their tool set is well known to the Developers. It seems as though Ret has vacillated between facerolling people in PVP to barely holding its own. Use Cataclysm beta to finally fix Ret as a balanced spec.

Embrace Tank Equality

The Developers have done a fantastic job of balancing the 4 tank classes in Wrath. The memo didn’t quite get to Encounter Design Team. You can see it at every tier that those guys had Warriors in mind as they designed the fights. Now to be fair, over 50% of all tanks in the game are Warriors (citation needed, but I can’t seem to find it), so I can understand to a certain extent them designing with Warriors in mind. However, if you are going to truly embrace Tank equality that means designing fights with all of your tanks in mind.

Let me give you a couple of examples from Wrath. The most obvious to me is the timer on Lord Jarraxxus fireball ability matches up exactly with a Warriors Shield Bash. That kind of screams ‘we had a warrior in mind when we designed this.’

Also, Gormok the Impaler can be disarmed on Normal mode to reduce the damage the Tank takes. General Vezzax really hurts a Paladin’s ability to generate threat, but doesn’t hurt a Rage/Runic tank nearly as much. Charging back in after Mimiron’s Shockwave allows for keeping him still and getting more time with melee dps. The Whirlwind ability of the Vyrkul in the Thorim encounter can be stopped by Disarm. Spell Reflect allows a Warrior to tank the Head in Mimiron.

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The activity I’m talking about is the selling of Proto Drakes. Certain guilds are selling spots in their Ulduar 10 runs. They know these fights so well, and overgear them to such a degree that they can essentially 9 man all the achievements and Hard Modes needed for the Rusted Proto Drake. The 10th person pays some large amount of WoW gold, transfers to that guild’s server, does the run, gets the achievements and the Drake, and transfers back home. I’ve heard figures up to 30,000 WoW gold.

This is very similar to how guilds would sell ‘Bear runs’ towards the end of Burning Crusade. There was a special Amani Bear mount which could only be obtained by completing Zul’Aman in a specified amount of time. My guild came close a couple of times, but ultimately we never got it.

Buying an Amani Bear run didn’t appeal to me back in Burning Crusade and buying a Proto Drake has zero appeal to me now.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with the guilds selling the runs. If you are that skilled/geared, and your customers actually get their Drakes/Bears, that’s awesome for your guild and it’ll fill the guild bank coffers.

I have also have no problem with the person buying the Drake. If you’ve got that much WoW gold, plus you have the real money to pay for the transfer there and back again, and you want to buy it, I’m not going to stop you.

What boggles my mind is the motivation for wanting to do that. Do you really care that much about what a random passerby at the Dalaran flight point thinks of you?

Buying the Drake would seem to indicate that the buyer wants people to consider him an excellent player, and cares about what people think of him as he hovers over the bank in Dalaran. I understand wanting to be respected by your peers, but anyone who sees a person on a Proto Drake, and then doesn’t see anyone else from your guild on one will be able to put two and two together pretty quickly. It’s not a single loot thing like the Drake from 3D. Everyone in your core team should have one. That’s assuming they even recognize the Drake on sight, or understand what it means.

To my warped way of thinking, the Proto Drake would be a trophy from a couple of unforgettable nights of raiding with my team. It would be a tangible representation of what we had accomplished together and a display of our achievement when we rode them, in formation, to our next raid.

If I had bought the Drake, it would just feel so hollow every time I brought it out. It would have no meaning.

To me it would be like buying a Doak Walker Trophy off eBay. The Doak Walker Trophy is awarded every year to the best running back in college football. After you bought the trophy, you would put up on your mantle. You would then let people see it when they came over for dinner parties, and maybe someone would even ask you about it.

Whether you told them the truth or made up a story, you’d know. You’d know in your spirit you really didn’t EARN the Trophy, the Drake. Oh, you’d tell yourself that it was just circumstances outside your control. You’d convince yourself that you were every bit as good as those guys who got you the Drake. You’d think that you really could have done it on your own. You didn’t have to be carried. But it would have meant leaving your friends, or your server. Or it would have meant raiding far more hours than you healthy normal lifestyle can allow.

But deep down, in that part of you that you don’t like to talk about, or acknowledge, you KNOW. You KNOW you didn’t really earn it. You bought it. The same as any guy who just hit 80, and couldn’t DPS, Tank, or Heal half as good as you can. He could have had one, too, if he had the money/gold.

For me, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t display a badge of honor that I hadn’t actually earned with my team. It wouldn’t feel right to me. Every time I brought it out it would only remind me of my choice to take the fast and easy path, to take the shortcut, and get a reward that I didn’t truly deserve.

Someone who buys a Drake run is well within their rights, as is the guild that sells it.

But respect? Sorry, not from this Dwarf.

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I know it’s still early and the xpac will not be out for awhile but it’s safe to assume that we will be switching to Horde for it. With this in mind I was curious as to how people felt about all aspects of this.

As always, I try to accommodate people as I want them to be happy in what they play. Obviously though we can’t end up having all tanks or all DPS .

So far it looks like lots of people interested in tanks and melee. Warriors, Druids, and Death Knights seem to be very popular choices. Not a lot of healers or Ranged DPS.

I responded that I just don’t know what I want to do yet, largely because I don’t.

I’ve always preferred Alliance to Horde, but once faction transfers are available, AoS Alliance will become even more of a ghost town than it already is.

I really like my current guild. It’s a fantastic group of guys and gals. We get stuff done, bosses die, and we have fun doing it. Most of us are what I call O.T.A (over traditional age). We are mostly adults with lives, families and stuff in ‘real life’ going on outside of WoW.

This is a group of guys I’d jump ship to stay with, without a question. I’m continuing to level up my Tauren Druid to get a feel for the Hordeside and to learn my way around their flight points and cities.

But I’m really unsure as to what I’m going to do in Cataclysm.

The idea of being a Tauren Paladin is very appealing to me. The Tauren are my favorite Hordeside race. I’d keep all the achievements, pets, and reputation I’ve built up on Honorshammer. Having those beautiful shields and offset two handers scale up to the Tauren model would make them look all the more impressive. The Tauern health bonus is really cool and Warstomp is a bonus. It’s a much better option than having to be a Blood Elf.

But there are times that I wonder if I want to stay in the tanking business. I will have been tanking for two full expansions when Cataclysm drops. The responsibility on a tank starts to weigh on you after a while. One mistake and you can wipe the entire raid. I’ve felt this especially on the Thorim fight. I was too slow in the hallway, but I always got people killed when I did Arena.

Maybe this time around, I’ll be Retribution first with a Protection off spec. I could still tank in a pinch, or for a 5 man group, but I wouldn’t have to tank in Raids. There are many nights that I’m the only Paladin in our little raid group, so we could keep the Blessings buff.

The problem is once you get off the tanking gig, it’s hard to get back on it. Guilds tend to keep the same tanks for years. If I gave up tanking, it would also mean more nights where I sat out raids instead of getting an invite.

And seeing the Ret Paladin at Blizzcon basically get booed off the stage reminded me that Paladins, and especially Ret Paladins, are probably the most hated class in all of World of Warcraft. Ret seems to go through a buff-nerf-nerf-buff-nerf-nerf roller coaster every expansion. But I don’t know, maybe every class feels that way.

I’ve never liked the concept of a huge, plated Holy warrior standing in the back and healing. It’s never made sense to me. Then you add in the fact that Paladin healing wasn’t very fun or exciting (especially when I was a mainspec Holy Paladin in Vanilla WoW). I think you can see why Holy has never held much appeal to me.

Perhaps with WoW getting a reboot in Cataclysm, I need one as well. Honorshammer kills Arthas and rides off into the sunset. I would get a new name, a new race, a new role, a new class.

I’ve never changed mains in the 3 plus years I’ve been playing WoW. I’m not sure if I could pull the trigger and do it in Cataclysm.

What if that old tanking bug hits me again, I’d like the option to pursue it. I’d love the option to try out healing on something that isn’t a Paladin, and to do some ranged DPS.

There’s really only one class that pull that off, and that’s a Druid. I know at least 2 of our team are thinking they will be Druids in the Xpac, one of which has been a Boomkin almost as long as I’ve been a Paladin. If I went Druid as well, it would mean we’d be pretty Druid heavy. Two Boomkins in a Raid? Probably not the best idea.

DKs aren’t an option for me. I just don’t personally enjoy the class. If you do, that’s great, more power to you. I don’t.

The only other Tanking class is the Warrior. I’ve got a level 80 Warrior and he’s fun. I’ve pretty much dropped him because I absolutely hate the Heroic Strike mechanic. We’ve got at least two people in my raid group wanting to do the Warrior thing next Xpac. A third just isn’t practical.

My other Level 80 is a Hunter. Again he’s a lot of fun, but I’ve experienced trying to get groups as DPS. It’s a lot harder than as a Tank. Sometimes, as a Tank, I feel like the only girl at a nightclub at 1:30am.

“You got Deeps to the left, Deeps to the right, and you’re the only tank online…” (Think Fins by Jimmy Buffet)

Groups seek me out and I like that. I hate having to try to put together my own group. Plus, Hunters are undergoing a huge rewrite moving from mana to focus. That probably means some big balancing changes throughout Cataclysm.

The other idea I’ve had bouncing around in my head is a true restart, a Goblin. I start a Level 1 Goblin Shaman and take him all the way to level cap where I join my friends. I’ll be at least a month or two behind them, but I’ll get to see all the new content that the redone zones have to offer. To my knowledge, no one in our group is planning to play a Shaman. They can do ranged DPS or heal, and I can bring the Heroism buff.

My biggest concern is that one of my friends just did a main switch from his Shaman to his Warrior. This guy is a lot like me, and I’m concerned that whatever turned him off to the shaman will turn me off as well.

So yeah, I responded that I have no clue what I want to do for Cataclysm. My guild leader thinks it’ll be here around May 2010, around 9 months from now. I’m thinking closer to the Christmas 2010, which would be almost 16 months away. Either way it’s plenty of time to figure out what I want to do.

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While I don’t  have as strong a case of alt-itis as Seri, I have been known to…  dabble… in character creation.  Okay, I’m addicted to it, and stubbornly roll healing class after healing class after healing class.  And don’t get me wrong, I don’t play most of the characters I roll.  Nothing against them, but a lot of them were either to take advantage of free realm transfers to clear up space on my home server and they were essentially retired and unplayed anyway, or they’re characters I’ve rolled to play with friends on other servers, who have flaked or had difficult to match schedules or the like.  Some…  I don’t really remember why I rolled, probably to peek around at the RP (since they’re almost always RP realms unless I’m rolling for a friend) and still there because I’m not at character cap.

My home server…  is full.  Specifically, it’s full of horde goodness.  The only lingering traces of Alliance on Scarlet Crusade are my first priest, who I am still admittedly suffering from major sentimental attachment to, and my druid.  My druid is a lv 70 druid, and damnit, I don’t want to level another from scratch.  I played her off and on from about the time I rolled my priest.  An was a paired character, Vie was the character I rolled to see if I could do this game all by myself.  An had strong ties to RP and other members of her guild.  Vie was played as being in-character as needed, but never really strongly caught as a character for me.  An will always be alliance, and may be played eventually, but primarily is used to keep up with my friends on that side of the fence.  Vie…  I miss playing, but I miss the system of support I have hordeside more.  Not to mention, hordeside she’s pretty much guaranteed epic flight, which is SO not happening if she stays alliance.

In short, I want faction transfers to happen NOW, primarily because I really really want to play my druid again.  I miss her.  I miss the boom, I miss the zoomrawr, I miss the tree-dance.  My name is Jov, and I’ve got an alt-problem.

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Am I the only one that has been underwhelmed by the tier sets in this expansion? It kind of makes me long for the days when druids wore shrubberies on their shoulders and antlers on their heads. Granted, as a Rogue I get to wear shoulders with a quick-flick tentacle animation… it’s so cool it *almost* balances out the terribad terrorblade gargoyle-ate-me helm. But I also feel pretty bad for the Priests, who look kind of like Rogues-in-training with their little black bandit masks. It’s like someone’s manager decided in a meeting one day that they were tired of the top half of Priests’ faces being covered by cowls all the time and decided that this time the other half had to be covered and, let’s face it, there are only so many ways to do that, and unless you’re going for a sheer veil sort of thing (which, btw, would be awesome) it’s going to end up looking like a bandit mask. (At least, for clothies anyway… I seem to remember a certain plate set with its bear trap necklace… now that was creative, if abhorrent.)

Where was I? Oh right, WotLK tier sets. Blizzard is currently previewing the T9 sets, pointing out that for the first time the Alliance and Horde versions will look different! Well, that’s great I suppose. I mean, orange really isn’t all that flattering with my complexion but I doubt I’m going to be showing much skin unless the helm graphic is so terrible I have to turn it off (again).

What they don’t point out, which I noticed because I have a pretty keen eye for these sorts of things, is that they seem to be using the same model for every piece of cloth T9, recolored for different classes. Examples:

See what I mean? It’s all the same, just different colors (and slight changes on the bottom of the robe for Warlocks). I’m not even going to go into the phallic shape of the overall outfit, because I’m sure you’re all perfectly capable of going there yourselves.

I sure would like to know why Blizzard is going in this direction. Is it a time issue? Are they pushing to get content out so quickly that they’re scrimping in the art department? Did they blow their whole budget on the druid forms? Is this just another side-effect of class homogenization? Has it come down to ‘we’re not even going to make one class LOOK cooler than another class, for fear you’ll only take them to raids’?

All I know is that it really gets my knickers in a twist. I sure hope it’s a one-time thing and not the wave of the future.

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It’s been a busy news week in Azeroth, with all the patch information coming from the PTR. However, perhaps the most interesting bit of news so far has nothing to do with the patch. On Monday, one of the CMs broke the news that Blizzard is working on a paid faction change service.

That’s right… at some point in the future, World of Warcraft players will be able to transfer their characters between Alliance and Horde. I’ll give you a moment to process this, in case you hadn’t heard already.

Ok, that’s long enough.

HOLY CRAP.

No, this is not a joke. The thread was actually updated on Wednesday to include some answers to common questions that came up when the accouncement was first made:

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A.. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

So much for my dream of being a sexy female Orc. Le sigh. One can only hope that once they get the kinks ironed out of the process that they’ll consider making this part of character recustomization. However, they’ve said in the past that they wanted to avoid people minmaxing their characters to the extent of declaring one race “best” for a given class. I guess I can see where they’re coming from, but it sounds kind of like an excuse to avoid balancing racial abilities to me.

Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A.. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.

Fair enough. Though I would love it if through some evolution of the overall game story arc the Druid class became open to additional races.

Q.How much will it cost?
A.. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.

No surprise there.

Q.Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A.. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.

Er… okay, I don’t really get the logic here but I guess that would prevent someone from using this service just to change their character’s race. Which, as mentioned previously, Blizzard doesn’t seem to want to do.

Q.. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A.. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

I’ll be curious to hear more details about this down the road. I think anyone who has taken the time to grind a reputation with another race’s faction would not want to lose that perk, but how would they determine which race’s faction it would translate to? Lottery could be fun, but would probably irk some folks.

Q.How often can you change your faction?
A..We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.

Another no-brainer, IMO.

Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A.. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.

This is an interesting question. On most realms, Alliance outnumber Horde though the exact ratio varies. Obviously, Blizzard doesn’t want to create further imbalance… it will be interesting to see if they decide to pair this service with server transfers to help *create* more balance between the factions.

On a more personal level, as a Horde re-roll I have several characters from Alliance that I would have considered bringing over to the Horde once upon a time. Now, I’m not sure I would. I’m pretty happy with my Priest/Rogue, and my alts for the other classes I enjoy most (Druid/Warlock) are now 60+. The benefit of bringing the old characters over is that they would come with a good chunk of gold, reputations, old tradeskill patterns that are more difficult to obtain now, epic flight and level 70 raid gear to give them a head start in Northrend. Decisions, decisions.

I can also see this having a big effect on recruitment, opening up the pool of potential applicants but also increasing competition for said applicants. This might hurt Horde more than Alliance, as we are generally the underdog when it comes to server population and raid progression.

So, what do you think about this announcement? Is the freedom to move between the factions going to create more problems than it solves? Would you use it?

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Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health or below is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin’s health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

When I first heard the change, my initial reaction was ‘QQ got it nerfed’. But anyone who looked at the first pass of AD knew it couldn’t and wouldn’t make it live like that. You can’t really say something has been nerfed when it’s still going to be better than what’s on live now. The new AD will be a buff to Paladin tanks. The current form on the PTR is hopefully balanced enough to make it to Live.

I’ve never wanted Paladins to be overpowered tanks, just appoximately equal tanks. But come on, it would have been fun to have had the OP version of AD for a little while, wouldn’t it?

The change basically means that it will always work but only reducing the part of the hit that takes you under 35%.

It’s still better than what’s on Live. On Live, it doesn’t work at all if it gets leapfrogged. If a hit takes you from 36% to 0% AD wouldn’t do anything and you’d die. The new AD you still might die, but at least AD will have absorbed some of the damage.

I also love that we can now monitor through the combat log how much AD is saving us. World of Logs shows Absorbs as Heals so I can see that in my healing done report.

Bottom line for me is that I can tank anything I’ve put myself up against in the game so far. The new AD, even with the PTR changes is better than the old one. I still get the Guardian Spirit affect on a 2 minute cooldown.

Faction Switch

Didn’t see that one coming. As much as I love Lore, Modus, and the rest of our Blood Elf contingent on Maintankadin, I just don’t think I could bring myself to make Honorshammer a Blood Elf. If all my friends went Horde I’d have to reroll, probably a Druid or Warrior. I think it will be great for people who want to switch sides to run with friends without having to level up again.

Although if you think about they have to put in the bits of code to change your race, so race changes within a faction (Dranaei to Dwarf for my Hunter) would be in the mix.

Extending Raid Lockouts

This is a brilliant idea. Basically, it’s Monday night, and you didn’t quite get all the Bosses down that week you wanted to. You can extend your raid lockout and not have your instance reset. So a slower progressing guild could spend two weeks in the same Raid. Basically, you could take 2 weeks to clear Ulduar and all your progress from the first week is saved and you don’t have to repeat those bosses the second week. I love it.

Engineering Buffs

I’m thrilled for the Engineering buffs that are coming in 3.2, but I don’t regret dropping the profession at all. Having two production professions was really hard. Yes, I had a gatherer alt, but he only had a slow flyer. Plus, I’d have to go consciously go farm with him. With Honors now a miner, I just grab Saronite and Titanium as I’m flying around doing other stuff. It’s more fun. I miss being an Engineer, but I’d much rather be a JC. Mining is staying.

Threat Stats

Math geniuses Theck and Jasari have been playing with the MatLab code for Paladin threat. Let me give you their conclusions:

• SotP is still a weak talent, unless they change it in the future to affect the 5-stack SoV proc. As it currently stands, the order is still One Handed Weapon Specialization > Touched by the Light > Crusade > Conviction > Seals of the Pure > Reckoning
• Crusade specs are still king. Even 1 Conviction + 3 Crusade is stronger than 5/5 Seals of the Pure.
• 5 Seals of the Pure + 5 Reckoning isn’t a bad option if you aren’t going more than 6 points in Ret. If you’re going deep enough to get Vindication or Pursuit of Justice though, 3 Conviction+3 Crusade would be even stronger.
• Reckoning is still our weakest threat talent, but it’s come a long way. It’s now 32 TPS per point, almost as good as Seals of the Pure’s 37 TPS per point.
• STR is still our best threat stat
• Block Value from gear is our second-best threat stat, in terms of itemization points. It’s far worse point for point though.
• Hit and Expertise are #3 and #4 in terms of itemization. They’re both solid threat stats, and are the last of the “good” threat stats.
• AP is “mediocre,” ArPen, Agi, and Crit are all “weak,” and Haste/SP/STAM are all “bad.”

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We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm.

When I first heard about the announced faction transfers I immediately had mixed feelings about it. The positives, as Blizzard pointed out, are that if you have a character of the opposite faction (let’s say Alliance) that you aren’t playing because your new friends are playing Horde, you can now revive that character and transfer it to the Horde. For me personally, I know someone who is die hard Alliance that I’ve wanted to play with but all my toons are Horde. If I wanted to, I can now transfer one of them to that server so that he is ready to switch factions when the service becomes available and I will be able play with my friend over there.

Sounds pretty good, right?

The only real negative that came to mind was that you’d have Horde Night Elves and Gnomes running around with Alliance Orcs and Undead. That’s just not right. But as I read the Blizzard announcement again, I see that it says “transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character”. While this is a bit vague, it makes me think that we may have to change races as well. I can only hope.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Leave a comment and let me know where you stand on this topic.

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The folks over at Wowhead launched their new character profiler tool, Wowhead Profiler, yesterday. According to the announcement in their blog, it has been under development for over 2 years and they’re extremely excited about it. I can’t say my initial enthusiasm was matched… do we really need yet another caching tool? Nonetheless, it’s from Wowhead, which has a pretty good history of making good tools…. I kind of felt obligated to check it out, and I figured as long as I was at it I would regurgitate some of the experience for your benefit.

Wowhead Profiler has the bonus of a pretty familiar interface for searching. When you load up the main profiles page it will by default show you everything. You can then use filters to narrow your search down, or choose a Region, Realm and type in a character name to jump to someone specific. The filters are pretty nifty. You can narrow the results down by level, region, realm, character name, faction, guild, arena teams, gear rating, profession and… much more.

If a character hasn’t been seen yet, Wowhead Profiler consults the armory. (It does have a surprising amount of seed data, though a lot of it is old.) You can also tell it to manually add a character to the resync queue, though the refresh may not be immediate depending on current traffic. The site is designed to keep its armory requests spread out, which I’m sure Blizzard appreciates. Characters that haven’t been updated in a while seem to be automatically added to the resync queue when you pull up their profile page. You can tell, because the ‘Resync’ button becomes grayed out and there’s a message at the top of the profile letting you know that it is resyncing.

Theoretically, you can use the profiler as a sandbox to swap gems/enchants and items around and see how they affect your stats but I didn’t have much luck with that. Right clicking an item brings up a menu with options to choose from, but when I chose ‘equip item’ and entered the name of an item in the search field it did a whole lot of nothing. Thinking that maybe it was a browser problem (I’m using the Firefox 3.5 beta at the moment), I swapped to Safari (4.0) and discovered that right-clicking did absolutely nothing there.

You can also save copies of the profile if you want to build multiple gear sets, which is potentially awesome for hybrids and off-spec planning… assuming others don’t have the functionality problems that I encountered when it comes to swapping gear around. (Presumably it’s working for someone or they wouldn’t have released the tool.)

Other features include a summary box that shows you at-a-glance where a character stands as far as gear ranking, raid progression, and badges earned. That has the potential to be pretty handy. While I don’t put much stock in gear rankings, being able to see whether someone has the raid experience they claim at a glance like that is pretty valuable. You can also quickly search for upgrades using Wowhead’s default stat weights or your own, which is handy.

Other misc thoughts…

It’s faster than the Armory when it comes to looking up item information, and as mentioned before the interface is very familiar to folks that have spent any time using Wowhead.

I found I encountered frequent slowdowns when loading character profiles while I was looking it over, but it is probably just due to traffic since the tool is so new.

I was a bit perplexed at first by the empty space in the middle of the character profile pages, uncertain what was supposed to go there until I switched browsers and discovered that it’s an advertising frame (thank you AdBlockPlus). That gave me a bit of a chuckle… a giant advertisement in the middle of the page? GG, Wowhead.

On the whole… it has potential but I’m underwhelmed. I’ll have to check on it later to see if I can actually use the gear-swapping options and play around with it some more, but in the meantime I’ll just keep using Chardev.

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With Jov out of town for the week, Seri is once again bereft of an outlet for her random musings, as well as a not insignificant source of daily entertainment. Well, when the cat’s away the mice will play…

Here at World of Snarkcraft we embrace diversity and recognize that no two raiders are alike but we can all co-exist in tree-hugging harmony. In fact, there’s a whole spectrum of different types of raiders out there that I thought I might explore today for lack of something better to do. For kicks, I threw in some non-raider archetypes too as a basis for comparison. Purely scientific, I swear.

• Raid-Oblivious: Sure, you may have heard of that Naxxramas instance but you’re not sure where it is and your guild isn’t big enough for 5-mans anyway so mostly you just stick to questing and PvP.
• Raid-Repulsed: The mere idea of raiding turns your stomach and it actually irks you that Blizzard caters to “those people”. You may or may not attend rallies in a bedsheet with eye holes.
• Raid-Indifferent: You never really understood what all the fuss is about when it comes to raiding. Maybe you’ve been on a few raids, maybe you haven’t. Whatever.
• Raid-Curious: You have some friends that have tried raiding and seem to like it, but you’re not sure if it’s for you. However, if you get drunk enough you’ll try anything once.
• Raid-Reluctant: You raid because your friends like to raid, but really you’d be just as happy drinking Shasta & braiding each other’s hair.
• Raid-Cautious: You raid regularly (and enjoy it) but are careful not to get too invested. You have a life outside the game and you do like to visit it between raids. Or, at least, you are pretty sure your S.O. will cut you off if you don’t.
• Raid-Obsessed: You raid more than is probably healthy. When you’re not raiding, you’re thinking about and/or planning for raids. You may have developed a taste for progressive German speed metal and six-armed women on those late, late nights in Black Temple.
• Raid-Shackled: You aren’t as into raiding as you used to be, but you keep doing it for some reason. Maybe you’ve been doing it so long you don’t know what else to, or you feel like you can’t set it aside because your guild/friends need you.
• Raid-Retired: You used to raid, but for whatever reason you had to pull the plug. Maybe you still play the game, maybe you don’t, but every now and then you like to reconnect with your old buddies and talk about the glory days. These young whippersnappers just don’t know how good they have it.

What description fits you the best? Be honest.

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I spent quite a bit of gold to enchant and gem some of my equipment for tanking.  Thankfully I had enough epic gear to use for tanking, without altering my DPS gear at all.  Not every piece is ideal for tanking but for now it will do.  After all of that, I’m still a little low on my defense rating, which is currently at 504.

What I didn’t know was that there was a defense cap, and that I wasn’t quite there yet.  I joined a heroic Violet Hold run recently and really enjoyed it.  I was able to tank it without any issues and really enjoyed it.  I don’t expect to make any moves in my main spec but it’s nice to have and to experiment with.

What I do want to do is spend some time working through some instances that will yield some tanking gear.  I’ll need to do some reading and figure out what I need and where to go.  I’m looking forward to it.

Have you been in a position where you’ve tested out other types of play?  Are you a Druid who tanks/heals, dps/heals, dps/tanks, etc?  What do you think?

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The main example that comes to mind is in the Thorim encounter. Most guides give a good explanation of the fight, and TankSpot as always makes it look easy, but none of the guides seem to mention the reduced casting time that occurs after Thorim’s hammer hits the ground. Casters have their cast times reduced by 75%. To me this is no small detail to overlook. For healers like myself, having your cast time reduced so drastically can be the difference in success or a wipe. So why is it that none of us had expected that to happen?

Is there a better resource for Ulduar guides that I have been missing, or is everyone overlooking details that may be crucial to these encounters? I realize that people creating guides are generally not making money from them and are doing so only to help the community, but it just seems to me, and others in my raid group, that there are important elements missing from the guides we are finding.

If anyone knows of a site for quality guides that I may not know about please let me know.

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