Heirloom? Really?

I have played on my Shaman a good bit lately.

Enough that she has leveled up to 23 now exclusively as an LFD healer.

Lets just say that so far I am having a blast.

I do have one question though. It’s about heirlooms, the shoulders in particular.

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Heirlooms are things no one ever liked well enough to wear out.

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Why, oh why, do they have to look like a coat rack some ones grandpa bought at a yard sale?

Seriously, I should get to equip four extra cloaks from my coat hooks.

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Thoughts on Blizzards Next Gen MMO

This one might just ramble a bit.

Mostly because I am not really talking about what I know as much as what I  Think is probable.

What the hell are you talking about you ask?

I am talking about what I see on the horizon as Blizzards next generation MMO.

You know, that game that most of us will likely end up playing a few years from now.

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Now there are quite a few people that will not like the direction I see this going.  Actually, I’m not even really sure that I like the direction I see it going. Then again, I am just saying what I think will come to pass, not necessarily what I would like to see.

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First thing I would do if I was sitting down to design a game is look at the type I am planning as it will influence nearly everything else in the decision tree.

Based entirely on the assumption that the next generation MMO will in fact, be an MMO, this question is partly answered already. Then again there are many types of MMO that are possible.

Not settings, thats a whole different issue. I am talking about actual game play types.

Based on what I have seen of the evolution of WoW I am leaning towards what amounts to a hybrid between the current gameplay model of WoW and a first person shooter. In a sense it’s already an option. Although everyone I have talked to plays with the camera zoomed out in more of a third person mode, it’s possible to zoom in and play in first person. 

I see that level of camera control being included in the game. It has worked well so far.

Another thing to note is that as time goes on much less reliance has been placed on things like crowd control and problem solving. More and more I see the design of encounters being “don’t stand in the bad stuff, kill the boss before he kills the group.”

As the fights evolve they seem to be more and more about movement, positioning, and overwhelming firepower. That kind of combat mechanic would fit in just as well with a rocket launcher toting grunt shooting at the big bad guy as it does with mages slinging fireballs.

This change to the group play dynamic has caused the fights to be more gear dependant then ever. That’s why they are essentially giving away tier 9 to your bank alt just for logging in at this point. The change has also made the game much more of a twitch reflex exercise in multitasking than it once was. 

Take into account also that Blizzard has done a good amount of experimenting with vehicle based fights and fighting in a three-dimensional environment. They have also done several fights now where the “holy trinity” of tank / heals/ Dps is not a factor. Think Malygos phase three as an example of all of that at once.

These kind of changes do not happen in a vacuum. Nor do the types of changes that have been revealed as coming in Cataclysm. Things like the continued homogenization of classes and the watering down of the talent trees. The upcoming paths of the titans that are apparently neither class or race specific is another example.

The developers at Blizz have said in the past that they work across groups to some extent at least. Ideas for these things could very well be coming from some of the same people that are working on the next game, just as ideas for the next game could be coming from some of WoW’s current development staff. 

They don’t even have to be working directly together to throw ideas back and forth around the water cooler.

All that together tells me to expect a MMO/FPS hybrid.

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The next thing I would have to decide is the genre I plan to cover.

Most, if not all of the other decisions that will go into creating the core mechanics of the game would be influenced by this. It would need to be addressed early, before the project even started really.

Going back to the idea of a MMO/FPS I would look at genres the would support that type of game play.

The ones that come to mind are Sci-Fi, Fantasy/Medieval, Steampunk, Gothic, and Post-Apocalyptic.

I might very easily be missing a few, but those are what come to mind for me.

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Sci-Fi would have a lot of potential. 

The vastness of space could account for a lot of diversity in races available to players. Different planets could essentially serve as separate servers, each with it’s own challenges and rewards.  “Technology” could take the place of “magic” for things we can’t readily explain the physics of.

There are a lot of plusses here, and I would love to play one created by Blizzard. Unfortunately I don’t really think this is the road they are going to go down.

I see two big reasons that I don’t think we will see it become Sci-Fi. One is the relatively large number of games that have tapped that genre already. The second and in my mind most telling is the fact that Blizzard has stated that it will not be in the Starcraft universe.

If they were going Sci-Fi they would certainly tap that brand recognition and use the Starcraft name if nothing else.

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The Fantasy/medieval genre would make for a good game. Blizzard has shown that they know how such a thing could be made to work. The storylines would be fairly easy to craft as they don’t rely on anything “real”, it just must be internally consistent with it’s own lore.

The downsides of this are even greater than for a Sci-Fi game.

First and foremost Blizz already owns the flagship MMO in this genre. The would become their own competition. Unless they plan to retire WoW completely or graduate it to a free to play/ microtrasaction game this would make a poor business decision. You don’t want your two subscription based games fighting each other for players. Ideally you want them playing both.

Why would they even consider staying with this genre if they could work towards domination of another while trying to keep WoW going with perhaps a different business model?

Blizzard may rock as a game design company, but they are in the end a business. They exist to make money.

That’s the biggest reason I can think of that we won’t see the next MMO as a Fantasy/Medieval game.

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Next up to the plate is Steampunk. Actually I will look at both Steampunk and Gothic together, as they have a lot of similarities.

Both have the potential to offer a wide verity of character archetypes. From vampires and werewolves to androids and regular humans all would fit right in. Between the two of them you have a lot of options to choose from. Hell, you could even run them together and have a Gothic Steampunk world.

It could even be made to account for two separate, possibly conflicting,  factions within the same game world.

Personally I like this idea. It would have a wide array of gameplay options. Everything from undead and magic to firearms and steam powered fighter planes would fit right in. It sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Somehow I don’t see it happening. If I am wrong though I would put this as an interesting second choice.

I know if they made it I would play it.

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This leaves me with one last contender, the one I think we will see on store shelves.

A post-apocalyptic world would lend itself to an MMO-FPS better than any of the others that I can think of.

There would be separated communities, and they would seem natural to separate into zones. It would make sense to have scarce resources, therefore having independent towns that acted as quest hubs to players would fit right in.  All the work Blizzard did on vehicle combat could come in very handy in something like this as well.

 There would be a lot of room to improvise in terms of both solo and group content. There would be reasons for both Pve and Pvp type content. Rep could be handled similarly to WoW. Each town or group of towns having it’s own reputation, perhaps with a bit of spillover to allied towns. Think of something similar to how rep with the goblin factions works.

Depending on how the world ended there could be mutations whether caused by radiation, a plague, or whatever else caused the apocalypse. This would give many available “classes” for lack of a better word, though I think it likely that your skills would be more separated from your class than in WoW.

Another thing that could not hurt is the likely timeframe. They have been working on this project for years, and that has likely just ramped up as more and more of the original WoW development team has moved over to work on it’s design.

Imagine the free publicity and general interest in a postapocalyptic game that was looking to hit the market in a couple years.

Say…. December of 2012 for instance.

In stores just in time for Christmas.

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Elbow room

A few days ago I was talking about my plans for Cataclysm. Actually I have been doing that a lot lately.

In this particular case I talked about both leveling my existing level 80’s to 85 and starting shiny new alts. Gnomageddon brought up an interesting point in the comments. He mentioned how crowded the new areas will be.

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I remember the chaos that was Hellfire Peninsula in the first days of The Burning Crusade.

I remember lagging out simply trying to zone into the Death Knight starter area in the days after Wrath launched.

I remember fighting shoulder to shoulder with dozens of others in the Draeni starter zone, trying to be the first to tag things as they spawned.

I remember how Shattrah stood empty while people literally waited in line for quest mobs to spawn in Borean Tundra.

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Once upon a time I even wrote  a post about my plans to spend the early days of Wrath in a quiet place, and I did.

This time will be a little different. Not much, but a little.

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In the early days of the Cataclysm I have absolutely no intention of trying to fight my way through the level 80-85 zones shoulder to shoulder with 75% of the rest of my server. Nor will I be in the new starting zones with the remaining 25% of my server trying desperately to level a Worgen or Goblin. Both of those will come with time.

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My current plan though is to do the same with my healers as I am currently doing with my Pally and Shaman. I will hit up the Looking for Dungeon for the new shinys.

I figure that my Priest, and possibly my Shaman if she is high enough in level, will level to 85 exclusively through instances. Regardless of how many people are online I won’t be fighting people for quest mobs at least.

Well, this assumes that additional instance will be able to be launched.

When things settle down a bit I will level my Hunter through the new quest lines and experience the content.

Once things settle down even more I will level up my Goblin and Worgen.

I am just going to wait until I have a bit of elbow room.

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Just an observation

It seem a lot of my posts start out with me sitting around the office in a caffeine deprived state. Generally I am pondering something of cosmic significance. You know the big picture important things in life.

Things like which alt to level today, or whether I want a bowl of chili or perhaps a sandwich for lunch.

Yes, apparently I need to find a new hobby.

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Anyhow, I have been talking a bit about leveling alts lately.

That brought a question to mind that I decided to actually look into.

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How much, exactly, would it cost to bankroll a brand new character all the way to level 80?

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Oddly enough the answer is “It depends”.

There are a lot of factors that will change your total cost. 

Different classes, and even specs within the same class, will have slightly different costs due to training costs being different. How you choose to level will also play a lot into it.

You could instance your way up like I am doing with my Pally and actually make more than enough to cover repairs and training. Questing your way up will provide some gold as well as quest rewards that can be sold. Even grinding can be quite profitable.

There are simply too many variables to take into account, so I won’t even try.

Even the gold sinks are a big variable depending on class and reputation.

Here is an example.

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• Riding skill of 75 costs 4G, and has a mount cost of 1G. Unless you are a Pally or warlock, then it’s significantly cheaper at the trainer. 
• Riding skill of 150 costs 50G and has a mount cost of 10G. Unless you are a Pally or warlock, then its significantly cheaper at the trainer. 
• Riding skill of 225 costs between 600 and 480G depending on rep, with a mount cost of 50G. Unless you are a Druid, then it’s significantly cheaper at the trainer.
• Riding skill of 300 costs between 4,000 and 5,000G depending on rep, with a mount cost of 100G.
• Cold weather flight is 1000G.

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At a glance I notice that only one of the five is actually a fixed cost. Over all the riding skill gold sink prices could range as high as 6,815G or as low as 5,073G depending on class and reputation levels. Over a 1,600G difference is quite a bit in my book.

I was originally planning on figuring out how much gold I would need to bank for each alt that I plan to level in Cataclysm before I actually start on them .

I suppose the answer is “at least 7,000G”, that way if anything I will overshoot on the high side.

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What’s the point of this?

There is none.

Like the title says, I am just making an observation.

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I would rant, but the letter Q is on backorder

There has been quite enough screaming and yelling about the escapades of various bloggers (myself included) in the new looking for group feature. Face it, fail pugs make more interesting writing that the ones that go incredibly smooth.

In fact there has been so much QQ that they had to ramp up Q production. I guess if nothing else it created a few jobs at the Q factory. Anyhow, in the interest of Q rationing this will not be a rant.

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I have been running the lower end instances lots lately. I actually find them quite fun, especially those that I have never actually run at level.

I have run as a healer on my baby Resto Shaman and as a tank on my Paladin.  The things I have seen make me want to write out a macro for my healer, I think it might get a bit long though.

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The Healer macro would go something like this:

Hello, I will be your healer for todays dungeon run. As you familiarize yourself with your surroundings please take a moment to glance at the health bars to the left of your screen.  familiarize yourself with their location, you will need to glance up there occasionally throughout the run.

Under the green bar representing my health there is a blue bar. That is my mana, and it represents your health. If it falls to zero while bad things are trying to eat your face off you will die. Kindly pause a moment in between pulls to allow me to drink it back full.

If you want you can just think of it as my water gauge, it is blue afterall.

As you are pounding on the bad things so that we can go through their pockets and look for loot please glance occasionally at the health bars. ideally you will see the tanks slowly rise and fall and that is about it.

If you are not the tank yet yours is falling you have attracted the attention of something that is now beating on you. I suggest locating the tank and running in his direction so he can peel it off you before it finishes digging out your spleen. He will be easy to locate, look for a large skull floating over a monster and you will find him beating on that one.

If mine is falling something has gotten loose and has proceeded to start gnawing on my knickers. This makes me grumpy, as getting blood stains out of this resto gear is a royal pain. Should this happen I will run up to the tank and flail about like someone who just won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.

Think of it as a delivery service with a floor show.

So long as we all work together to keep all the bad things that the tank pulls beating on just the tank you may rest assured that  I will be doing my utmost to keep us all alive. That is what I’m here for after all.

Alrighty, buffs are passed out and my pre-dungeon snack looks like it got  my water gauge to full again.

If you would please buckle your seatbelts and return your tray tables to their original upright positions we can get this party started.

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Maybe I’ll sit down and write one up for my tank too, but thats a tale for another day.

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Just remember to push in the clutch first

I was busily poking the keys trying to put down what I think Blizzards next generation MMO will be like, and why. Low and behold there comes a ding in my mailbox… apparently a post from a few days ago had received a comment.

Needing a bit of a break from the thinking I was doing I wandered over to check it out.

It appears the Guthammer  has made a rather thoughtful comment in my post about gear I am setting aside for my Caclysm alts.

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I might grab an heirloom weapon or two, and the trinkets, for leveling, but you won’t find any of my Cataclysm alts in the XP gear.

There was enough content in Azeroth to hit 60 twice per faction without too much overlap in content…why would I want to consume less of the reworked stuff that I just paid $40 for.

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That got me thinking, which oddly enough was what I was avoiding in the first place, but I digress.

He really does have a great point there.

The new content I am so looking forward to is not going to be tuned for new alts with a ton of heirlooms, it will be tuned for new players in general.

I am really looking forward to this new content and don’t simply want to level past it at top speed. I want to see it all, even if it means seeing it slower. There are a few ways I can see that would help this out, and they all involve changes in the way I have leveled for years.

A paradigm shift as it were.

Ever since my first character, an Undead Warrior named Dechion,  made it to Brill I have been logging out from places that gave me rest.  Inns, cities, any place that I can set my hearth will let me rest.

Rest is good right? After all my little cartoon friends need some time off after a busy day of killing 8,467 boars looking for twenty that actually came equipped with livers. As an added bonus next time I log in I get double experience for a time, depending on how long I parked there resting.

Did I carry that too far? Possibly.

I actually got to the point with some of my characters that I would only play them one day a week, thus ensuring I could get double experience the whole time from that first town to the level cap.

For my new characters that will stop, at least until they hit Outlands.

It only takes a second to walk two paces outside the inn. I don’t want to outlevel any of the new zones as I quest my way through, and never resting should go a long way towards that.

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I suppose I could simply not use the heirlooms that grant bonus experience, and in fact that is an option that I will keep open. In the case of the new content I would happily use ones that had no XP bonus if it was an option.

Then again, if the quests and mobs start turning green in a given zone I can always go turn off XP gains until I am done. I can always turn it back on when I move to the next zone.

You might think I am mad for not dashing to 85 as fast as I possibly can.

After all, once I get there I can start running 5 mans to gear for heroics.

Then run heroics to gear for raids.

Then grind for consumables and enchants and faction rep and ……

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Screw that.

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I don’t raid anymore anyway, I got off that hamster wheel.

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Why in the hell would I hurry up and fly past the stuff I actually like to get to something that seems more like a job?

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Sometimes as I am sitting around thinking things like “hey what all can I have in place for my new alts” I can get a little carried away. I blame it on having an early start and a quiet office.

Anyhow, thanks for the kick back to the reality of why I am looking forward to this in the first place.

To the list of things I am saving up for my future alts I’ll be adding a paradigm shift.

When the time comes, I am going to need it.

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Looking forward to the end of the world

Thinking about the future is one thing, actively planning for the unknown is another.

That has been taking up a good chunk of my time lately. Planning, plotting, and gathering has been on my list of things to do for a while now.

Like a squirrel putting away nuts for the winter, or the ant in the famous story stocking up for a rainy day I have been gathering.

Gathering up things that I will need for my new characters when the Cataclysm comes later this year.

In a way that is a shame.

It’s not that I am not enjoying the game that I am playing now, far from it. It’s more along the lines of looking forward to the content to come.

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People who like to raid are getting their fix of new content now, as Icecrown opens its doors to their not so tender advances.

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People who prefer PvP are getting a new arena season. (Or so I have been told, I don’t participate.)

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People like me who actually enjoy the leveling process are still running the same content we have for the last four years. Soon though, that will change.

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I for one am looking forward to it.

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New places to explore, new quests to do, new lore to see, it will be great.

Ok, it will be great unless I am required to swim everywhere. I prefer my gaming environment to be rather two-dimensional. Thats probably why I don’t care for Eye of Eternity or Oculus, but I digress.

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What does any of this have to do with gathering stuff towards the Cataclysm?

Well, it turns out that looking at it I am not gathering like it’s the end of the world.

I am gathering like I am going on vacation.

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I want enough cash in the bank that I don’t have to worry about grinding dailies or working the auction house to support the characters I will be leveling. That sounds an awful lot like vacation to me. I just want to have fun and not “work” to support it.

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I want basic starter gear for both of the ones I plan to start. I am not talking about having a complete changout of gear I can swap to every ten levels sitting, already gemmed and enchanted, in the bank.

I am just talking about a few heirlooms and other odds and ends.

That leads me (as such things often do) to making a list of what I want to have set aside for my new characters. Since I am writing it down anyhow, and need to put it somewhere where it won’t get lost, it’s going to go here.

• Cash. 8K gold should be enough to cover money sinks all the way through cold weather flight, so I’ll likely go with an even 10K to be safe.
• Bind to Account chest(s) appropriate to the class.
• Bind to Account shoulder(s) appropriate to the class.
• Bind to account weapon(s) appropriate to the class.
• Inventory bags. I figure four Frostweave Bags at 20 slots each will do fine.
• Bank bags. Seven Travelers Backpacks will do well here. 16 slots each, and non-binding so I lose nothing by updating them later. 

Is that perhaps going a little overboard?

I don’t think so.

Going overboard would also include things like this:

• All the cloth to level first aid to 450.
• All the meats to level cooking to 450.
• All the raw materials to level both chosen professions to 450.
• A well stocked personal guild bank full of consumables and recipes.
• A second tab in that bank with complete gear sets (minus the heirloom slots) to carry you all the way to 80. Bonus points if there are sets for multiple specs.

When the Wrath of the Litch King was still on the horizon I was planning and gathering as well. The difference is I was a raider back then. Everything revolved around getting to 80 as quick as possible so I could get back into the raid group.

Leveling those ten levels from 70 to 80 was a chore to be done, an obstacle in my path. Work I had to do before I could play the game I wanted to. Everything I stockpiled was with that in mind.

Now it’s the leveling I am looking forward to, and raiding is just distant smoke on the horizon.

This time instead of having ten levels of work before I could start to have fun, I am looking forward to 85 levels of fun before I start having to work.

It’s actually kind of refreshing.

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CC means Consecrate, Consecrate right?

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at tanking.

Low level Pally tanking to be exact.

So I rolled myself a baby Pally and threw her some heirlooms.

Thus began my adventures in tanking my way to 80.

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So far the biggest thing I can say for it is the difference in the players from level 80 heroic groups boils down to this.

Heroic pug = ”OMFG GOGOGOGO!!11!!!  NEED MOAR BADGES FASTER!!!!1!!”

Low level pug = “OMFG That was FUN! Want to stay grouped and run another?”

Now it might just be my well documented horrid luck with pug heroics, but I am having an absolute blast running the low level stuff.

Five instances so far and not a single problem. All the folks I have run with have been decent and polite. Truly a joy to run with. So much so that Dechion the patient has not run a single out of guild heroic since the day I rolled my little Pally.

The most fun though had to have been a Stockades run from a few days ago. I zone in and look at my party frames to see what buffs to put up and what do my wondering eyes behold?

Paladins.

One Holy, one Prot, and three Ret.

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Much joking ensued as we buffed up. One of the others passed out vent info as we were getting ready to roll .

By roll, I mean steamroll.

We were pulling two rooms plus the pats in  the hallway on purpose just to see how far we could take it.

The chatter on vent was a welcome change from the “silent pug” that I usually see in heroics. Much laughter and joking about was had. In short I had a blast. 

We went on to run two back to back stockades runs, I think all of us leveled during one or the other. Not a wipe was had, in fact not a single death.

The only thing bad I have to say about the whole experience is I cannot add cross server folks to a friends list.

Based on my luck with most pugs thats saying something.

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Upon further consideration…

Yesterday I put up a rather long post about what I see as some of the reasons for the disparity in the amount of tanks and/or healers available in the game. The post did not draw a huge amount comments, but it did draw some pretty insightful ones.

After reading those and doing a bit more thinking on the subject some of my opinions are somewhat changed. I thought of simply putting this all in the comments, but it actually deserves its own post.

Remember when I said I might hijack some of your comments for further posting?

I wasn’t kidding

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In yesterday’s post I broke it down into four categories, mostly to help me keep my thoughts in order. I did, after all, write that before I finished my morning coffee.

Today I am going to go about it just a bit differently..

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TheReaper brought up a few good points last night.

In my opinion tanks are far easier to gear than any other archetype in the game.
Are you defcapped? Yes? Stack stamina. No? Get more def rating.

Avoidance automatically increases with gear and unless you went really wrong somewhere threat generation isn’t much of a problem either these days.

There are certain encounters where a specialized set of gear comes in handy, but those are usually hardmodes that I don’t worry about on my twink (even though I have successfully tanked all raid instances in the game and my paladin is currently sitting just shy of 5400 gs).
On my rogue however, gearing is a nightmare. What stats do I look for?
Expertise
Agility
Critrating
Hitrating
Attackpower
Haste
Sounds complicated? Well, it gets worse…
Expertise pretty much trumps everything until you hit the dodgecap (26 expertise).
Hitrating is imperative up to the poison hit cap, which differs depending on: specc, group composition, available debuffs, race and weapon. If you wanted to really squeeze every last drop of dps you might need up to 5 different sets to hit the different hitcaps.
Hitrating raises your soft crit cap, its great if you reached the cap, pretty bad if you didn’t.
Agility/critrating are good until you hit the soft crit cap, but fall behind AP/haste above it.
So every time I could get a new piece of gear I have to pull up my spreadsheet, see if equipping it would bump me over my soft crit cap, regem/reequip hitrating accordingly, figure out if the upgrade is still worth it at that point and so on.

 

 

 

 Sorry for the wall of text, but gearing a dps class is by no means “easier” than gearing a tank or healer.
Gearing becomes difficult when you try to maximize your effectiveness, I want to do that on my rogue, so its hard, I don’t want to do that on my paladin, so it appears easier to me.
Someone with a pally tank main and a rogue alt would probably react in the exact opposite way.

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I will admit that when I look back at it with a more critical eye I see that I may have filtered my perceptions of the complexity of gearing through the lens of my experience. Then again, I think we all would.

Today I am both properly caffeinated and looking at this from a wider perspective. The relative difficulty of gearing any character for a specific role will be different for different people. It will also to a large degree depend on who is doing the gearing and why.  

First, how familiar are you with the class and role?

If you are gearing a character class you are familiar with for a role you are familiar with it will be a lot easier. Like any other task, it will be easier with experience. The more you do something the easier it seems.

Secondly, What are you gearing for? The reasons you are gearing up will also influence not only your gear choices, but how in depth you need to go into “perfecting” your gear, spec, and play style.

For instance, I enjoy battlegrounds on occasion, but have no desire to do arena. My gearing for PvP would be simplistic in comparison to someone who was playing on a top rated arena team. Someone who levels up and decides just to stay in 5 mans will have less of a need to min-max their character than someone who plans to see Arthas fall in Icecrown 25.

As TheReaper said, Gearing becomes difficult when you try to maximize your effectiveness.

There are the absolute basics like he mentioned about gearing a tank, and I mentioned about gearing a hunter at one end of the spectrum. At the other there are calculators, spreadsheets, stat weighted gear sorters, and just about any other thing you can think of to help min-max. I suppose it’s really about how far you want to go down that particular rabbit hole.

Fortunately (in my opinion) the stats are planned to be streamlined in Cataclysm which should make the learning curve a bit less steep when deciding to change how much you choose to focus on a given role.

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A few people touched on the social aspect.

Isa wrote (in part)

… While a different game design could make tanks and healers less obvious points of failure, and thus less scary, I think it’s this social mechanism you’ve mentioned that drives the shortage, and not the design. In other words, I believe game design can be a solution but it’s not the real problem.

Greysmoke wrote (in part)

… There does seem to be a pervasive idea that once you hit 80, you should know perfectly whatever role you’re playing, so if you’re wanting to switch from dps to heals or tanking, you’re either going to take a lot of abuse OR you’re going to have to rely on friends and guildies to see you through the learning curve. And it seems to be much worse for tanks than healers, in my experience. …

Humans are for the most part social creatures. That is one of the big reasons Wow is so damn popular. If I got this level of enjoyment out of a solo console game I would have saved a bloody fortune over the last four years. Hell, if I were not a social creature I would not be writing about it and you folks would not be here commenting.

One of the things many people fear in a social situation is rejection by ones peers. They may not admit it, or even consciously know it, but it will influence their decisions.

The steeper the learning curve would be to achieve success the fewer will be willing to climb that learning curve. The greater the cost, or more visible the failure would be, the less likely people are to take the risk.

This can be lessened somewhat by being able to practice alone. Target dummies and random critters out in the world do a good job of that for Dps classes. Battlegrounds (especially AV) can be a good training ground for healers.

I have yet to find a way to “practice” tanking in a way that does not involve running a five man.  Of course, having said that someone will come by and tell me how to do it now.

The only ways to eliminate that would be for Blizzard to somehow put in the ability to practice tanking into the game, or to eliminate the distinctions between tanks, heals, and dps. Somehow I think that the simulator is more likely in Wow, and eliminating the distinctions is more likely to happen in the next generation MMO, but that is a whole other post.

As Isa said, game design can be a solution but it’s not the real problem.

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The more I think about this the more I think it boils down to two major reasons for the disparity.

The first is the fear of failure, particularly of public failure and the ridicule that can go with it.

That goes a long way to explaining not only why people tend to not play the single point of failure roles, but why many that do will have periods of “burnout” where they drop that role in favor of Dps. Whether actually performing the tasks to play the role well is more difficult or not, the perceived stress coming from the fear of failure will get to some people after a while.

I know there was a time when I took six months or more off healing and went shadow on my priest, just because I was tired of getting blamed for choosing to throw my heals on the tank who is holding the boss and letting some idiot that was standing in the bad die.

*note to all:  if your feet are on fire… please move.*

The second is the ability to practice and improve ones performance outside of a group setting.

How much “soloable” content that can be practiced on may not be a factor, but I do see a direct relation to role choice. It may be coincidence, but then again it might not.

• Dps

Training opportunities include everything from “kill ten rats” quests, to target dummies. There are lower level instances to run solo or in a group, battlegrounds to fight in, mobs wandering the countryside, in short it’s a Dps paradise.

By the time people leave their starting zone they have the beginnings of a grasp on Dps. Unless you heal or tank instances as you level every character is a Dps’r all the way to the level cap.

Most training opportunities, most common role.

• Healing

Training for healing is a good bit harder to come by. Since the only way to learn group healing is to heal groups your choices pretty much boil down to healing instances, healing raids, or healing in PvP. I suppose we could throw in the odd group quest while leveling that requires a bit of healing, but honestly most can be solo’d by a Dps class.

That’s pretty much it for healing. Sure there are a few times here and there where you can learn healing outside of running instances and raids, but not much at all.

Much leaner training opportunities, much fewer players in the role.

• Tanking

Training for tanking is simple. Run five mans, or run raids. That pretty much covers it. Perhaps a few group quests would count here as well. I can think of no ways to practice holding threat and managing cooldowns as a tank in a group other than being the tank in one.

Could you go practice your rotation of a target dummy, or random mobs out in the world? Sure.

Will that show you whether you would actually be holding aggro against high output Dps? No.

Will that get you practice in using your “oh crap” buttons at the proper time? No.

There are a very few skills you could actually practice, such as line of sight pulling of casters, but there is really not much you can do without a group.

Least amount of training available, fewest people willing to step into the role.

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I don’t see these things so much as a reason people will not roll a tank or a healer. I see them more of a reason that tanks and healers both will tend to find groups of friends while learning their trade. Friends that will help them out and not give them a bunch of grief as they learn the ropes of that role.

Once a person has done that why would they want to run with strangers? Why take a further chance of getting crap from people you will never see again in favor of rolling with folks you know you can depend on? Why put yourself out there in a spotlight ready to be criticized if someone pulls aggro or stands in the fire?

In the bigger picture I don’t really think that there exists a disproportionate number of Dps. I simply think it much more likely that people choosing the tanking and healing roles are less apt to run with strangers. The are a lot more likely to run with those they have had good luck with before.

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The next time you are in a pug 5 man and one of the players says “Hey guys, My gearscore is low and I am new to this role. How about you help me learn the ropes?”

Are you going to be one of those that just bail and leave that person hanging, or will you be one of those that says “Thanks for the heads up, we can do this.”

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Think about it.

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It’s about class, in more ways than one

Lately there have been a ton of posts about the differences between the three major roles (tanking, healing, and Dps).

It all started with a guest post over at World of Matticus. As that slowly simmered in peoples heads I suddenly started to see my feed reader positively explode with posts on the subject.

Over the course of a few days it has spawned posts from Blessing of Kings, Spinksville, forbearance, The Pink Pigtail Inn, Azure Shadows, and the  Big Bear Butt to name a few. Actually I suppose I could include myself in that, but you are already here.

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Now, I am not going to get deeply into whether I think tanks and healers deserve a greater reward than Dps for running the same content. I will simply say no.

Same content, same reward.

The party is a 5 player team, and should be rewarded as such.

Now that I got that out of the way, moving on…

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The defining point of this topic seems to be the fact that there is nearly always a lack of healers and/or tanks. That is what I am going to look at.

No, I am not arguing whether there is a shortage or not. There is, and I think I know a bit of why.

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• Fear

Simply put, both of these roles are single point of failure roles. Generally if one of them goes down it’s a wipe.

Fear of failure keeps many from ever trying.

Peer pressure can be a bitch. Just look at how Kaylynn started off planning to learn tanking as she leveled, and after getting treated like crap by her peers gave up on it.

Yes there will occasionally be a second character in a Dps role that can take over if needed. I have seen a cat Druid go bear when the tank went down. I have seen an elemental Shaman pick up heals when the Priest pops angel form. I have seen Rogues evasion tank that last few percent, and Hunters that pet tanked.

I have seen a lot. However I would say at least 90% of the time that either the tank or the healer goes down we will be running back.

There is a good amount of stress involved in knowing that if you screw up the whole group dies. Lots of people I know play the game as a way to burn off the stress of their daily lives. They don’t want stress where they have their fun.

Barring a complete redesign of the games mechanics I don’t really see a solution for this one. It simply is what it is.

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• Gear

In my opinion gearing up as a Dps is simply easier. The vast majority of quest rewards are geared towards exactly that.

Dps gear.

Now that makes a good deal of sense on the part of the designers. At the point you are leveling up the vast majority of players do so in a Dps spec. It simply makes sense to do it that way, as the questing is generally more easily managed and faster as Dps.

I know I have always always gone that route, at least until yesterday. (I am going to attempt to level a Pally as Prot. She is all of level 10 right now. More on that in later posts.)

Gearing as Dps is also generally simpler. Lets assume my Hunter just made 80. A little bit of reading shows me that I need to gear for the hit cap of 8%. Once that is done I simply stack agility, int, and perhaps a bit of  stamina and I will be fine.

Not perfect maybe, but fine.

There is also a decent amount of  crafted blue quality gear that will make decent Dps gear. Hell, that same hunter could put on most of the Swiftarrow PvP set with a few other crafted odds and ends and be geared enough to do his job in heroics about 3 seconds after hitting level 80.

From my experience at least there is simply a lot more number juggling that goes on with gearing a tank or a healer.

Take as an example my Priest. As a healer he needs Spellpower, Int, Spirit, crit, haste, MP-5, and Stamina, not necessarily in that order. He needs to balance throughput with mana regen in addition to everything else. Stacking one thing will simply shortchange him somewhere else, it needs to be a balance.

Trying to use my DK tank as an example is pretty shaky for me since I have yet to actually tank with her. I do recall spending quite a bit of time working on which gear to get from what source to achieve all the numbers that were on the notepad I had to write them all down on.

Off the top of my head I can think of Defense rating, Stamina, Strength, hit rating, Dodge, Parry, and Expertise. I am sure there is more that I am forgetting, my notebook with all the math in it is at home. Actually my head hurts just thinking about it.

Simply put, when gearing my character turns from “oh, cool this is an improvement!” to “Hell, I don’t know. Lets do some calculus to figure out if it’s an upgrade.” that is no longer fun for me.

Fortunately most of the solutions that I could think of for this are already being worked on, and are planned for Cataclysm. They have already announced a streamlining of stats to make them a bit simpler when figuring out what to wear.

An example would be all tanking classes getting their defense capped through talents, similar to the talent Survival of the Fittest which Druids already have. At least that will be one fewer number to juggle.

Not only do I think that will help with designing the entry level crafted gear, but should lessen the need for dual-specced characters to carry multiple sets of gear. A player that can simply re-talent and use most of the same gear is more likely to try out a role than one that has to drop a sizable chunk of change on an “offspec” set of gear.

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• Skill

There is much to be said for being skilled at what you do.

Running as Dps, Heals, and Tanking require very different skill sets than each other. Yes, that is pretty obvious, but it bears repeating.

Every character that comes into the game starts as Dps. Depending on which race you picked you might be killing anything from wolves to pigs, possibly even walking flowers or glowing worms. The simple fact is you will be killing something, at least for a while.

Could you level up purely through LFG? Sure thing.

Actually I am planning to try it with the Pally I mentioned earlier. My failures should be blogworthy at very least.  

For now though, she is a Dps prot Pally questing her way towards level 15 or so before I start pugging.

With Dps I can (and have) simply solo leveled my way to the cap, learning as I went how to do it. There used to still be a difference in skill however. If you made the level cap as a Dps there was still more to learn. Crowd control, threat management, and  mana management were things that soloing did not teach.

It still doesn’t, but we no longer really use them. The second half of WotLK has been Aoe the trash, blow cooldowns on the boss, balls to the wall and don’t worry about mana or aggro for the most part. If something goes wrong its the tank/healers fault.

Both tanking and healing require a completely different set of skills, skills that will only be learned by practicing them. Unfortunately there is no place to practice them other than in a group. A group generally composed of extremely judgmental strangers. No one likes to be called out as a failure.

Here is a secret. We all start out failing.

Some learn faster than others, some never do. The fact remains that no one simply installs the game one day and magically knows how to do everything.

Another quick example.

I made a party chat macro that goes something like this:

Hiyas folks. Just a heads up, I am new to tanking. I may move a bit slower than you are used to as I am learning the pulls. Please give me a few seconds to get everything really pissed off at me before starting Dps, it will make our lives a lot easier. I will mark the kill target with a skull, please concentrate Dps on that one.

I have so far used that macro three times.

Both times I used it on my lowbie Druid I got a wall of “kk, ok, can do, or thanks for the heads up”, and my favorite “my main is a bear tank, mind if I offer a few tips”? I ran Wailing Caverns twice on that character and had a blast both times.

When I tried that on my level 80 DK it did not go nearly as well.

I decided to forgo the two Emblems of Triumph in favor of going to an instance that I know fairly well. I qued up as a tank for the first time, choosing normal Nexus to cut my teeth on. I que up, zone in, and as we are buffing up hit my macro.

One by one the other four dropped group.

The only one who so much as whispered me was the healer, and all he had to say was “Sorry mate, I just want a quick badge run.”

Four people would rather take a 15 minute debuff than give me that 15 minutes to show that I had a clue which button to push. Three out of the four likely lost a solid half hour between the debuff and the re-que time. 

I wonder if any of them bitched about there being so few tanks while they waited.

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Thats just a single example of how learning the needed skills can be a bit harder for the tanking and healing roles. 

How do we solve this?

I think the new LFG tool will actually go a long way towards helping to even things out given enough time. Other than that I can’t really see a way to get practice in for group roles without a group to heal/tank for.

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• Design

Just a quick note on design. Since every class has to be able to level solo, and that was set up as a Dps task. Every class has to have at least one spec that can Dps.

Look at that for a second.

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Ten classes, all of which can Dps.

Four can only Dps.

Four can tank.

Four can heal.

Two can do all three.

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There are thirty talent trees.

Six are tanking trees.

Five are healing trees.

Twenty-three are Dps trees.

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The game is designed to favor the creation of Dps characters. Without completely re-inventing how characters work that is not going to change. I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Do I have some ideas for how it could be done differently? Oh, I most certainly do, but now is not their time. They will be coming up in another post on what I think Blizzards next generation MMO might be like.

This wall is long enough without me opening that can of worms.

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