Saturday, March 15, 2008

Inspiration

One of the many excuses I use to justify my infrequent posting is lack of inspiration. I need inspiration because I dont want this blog to be filled with variations of "Hai Der look at this!" posts. In my opinion posting for the sake of posting is pointless and anoying. Another problem is that I can spent 2-3 hour working on some seemingly brilliant idea while it just laughs at me and slaps me round for a bit until I give up. This has often lead to me accepting sub standard (at least one's I'm sure could be much better) posts just to keep going.

So if any of you few misguided individuals who do visit this place have any idea's, want to hear my view on a particular subject, or have a particular subject you would like me to rant about, please let me know. I won't promise you I'll do it, but I will give it a good thinking over (and possibly an hour or two of frustrating and fruitless typing) before rejecting any ideas.

I Know Your Out There!

Yep, I know there are a few misguided people who actualy visit this blog. I know because my hit counter keeps going up (not very much I'll admit, but it does) and they are not all hits from me cheaking to see if anyone actualy comes here :)

So I decided to make this post as an apology and a warning to anyone foolish enough to read this stuff. I know I have many spelling mistakes and grematical errors in my post's. I also know that it often looks like I loaded a buch of punctuation into a gun and fired it randomly at the screen. Also my flagrent abuse of the prenethesis has given the RSPCP (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Punctuation) several cases against me. At the end of the day, however I just don't give a damn. Read it or not, thats up to you, but don't bother to complain as I'm just to lazy to do any better :)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Five Seconds Please!!!

The Rant

You nasty, evil, hateful people. Your destroying my sanity. And I bet your doing it on perpose.

Ok, from the tital and the first line can you determine who I'm refering to? Thats right. I'm talking to you dps junkies out there. Bad dps junkie, BAD! Turn that damage meter off right now! Or at least hide it untill the end of the run, because I know your eyes are glued to that and not the threat meter. Because of you I'm currently reserching a way to puch you through my internet connection, and all my experiments have so far given me is a sore fist and a broken phone.

Why this rant you ask? Well let me tell you I'm sick and tired of being asked to tank and then not being alowed to do my job. I mean ok if I'm only tanking one mob at a time, fair enough, wait until I hit the bugger then go nuts and if I can't keep ahead of you on threat then somthing is seriously wrong, or I'm just being lasy. But, and it's a big but, (no pun intended) when I'm tanking 2, 3, 4, or in those rare and frustrating cases, 5 mobs you have to give me more time to generate the initial threat. Look at it this way I can generate (rage dependant) 800-1000 tps (threat per second). Cool yeah? All well and good, but in the initial stages of a two mob pull thats split between the two, meaning I only generate 400-500 tps.

Why is this important you ask? Are you one of those people who managed to get to lvl 70 and geared up in the BG's without ever learning about threat? Thats the only reason I can think of for you giving me such a hard time. You are? Then allow me to enlighten you on the subject.

About Threat

Me: First things first. Each mob has a threat list and the reason he attacks someone is because that person is top of his threat list.

Dps Junky: What causes threat?

Me: Good question. All kinds of things cause threat, like spells, healing and damage done.

Dps J: But I do a lot more damage than the tank so wouldn't I cause more threat? I mean just look at my damage meter I'm miles above the tank.

Me: Ordinaraly that would be true. Hang on a minute, WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT THE DAMAGE METER! GO STICK IT WHERE THE SUN DOESN'T SHINE! And I don't mean Ireland despite the popular belief or it's inhabitants (myself included).

Me: Back on topic. Yes ordinaraly more damage = more threat, but tanks have abilities that generate much more threat than a normal attack would, and so while doing less than a third of your damage can generate as much or more threat, thats not to say that even what they are doing their job you cant pull aggro off the tank so always watch your threat meter carefuly as a good string of crits could take you way up the threat list.

Dps J: But I don't have a threat meter.

Me: You don't have a threat meter, yet you have a damage meter? GO GET ONE NOW! WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE? MOVE, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!!

Dps J: I'm back and I have my threat meter now.

Me: Ok I'm calm I'm calm. Lets take a look at some of a warriors threat generating abilities from the perspective of the mob. All of the listed abilities cause much higher amounts of threat than a normal attack, bar the pull. I shall put the mechanics of the ability in perenthesis, not the full mechanics, but enough for you to understand whats happening when the warrior uses them.

Why You Let The Tank Pull: That bugger just shot me!! Lets get him Lads. (Generates threat through damage and entering the mobs aggro zone first)

Heroic strike: Did you see that fancy move he just hit me with? Did you? And it hurt. Well I'll show him. (On next normal attack, extra damage)

Devastate/Sunder Armour: What the hell?!? He's breaking up my precious armour. We can't be having with that now. (Extra attack that reduces the targets armour value, stacks up to 5 times, and causes damage in the case of devestate)

Shield Slam: He just hit me in the face with his shield! Your gonna pay for that! (Extra attack that requires a shield)

Revenge: He just avoided my attack and then hit me with that fancy move. Gggrrrrrrrr!!! MOB SMASH!! (bonus attack that must follow a dodge/block/parry)

Taunt: That mage just hit me with a HUGE fireball, better go kill her. Wait a minute! What did that warrior just call my mother???? (The warriors threat is now equal to the highest threat on the targets threat list and the mob will focus on the warrior for a short period regardless of threat).

Dps J: If the warrior has all these cool abilities why can I still pull aggro?

Me: Thats because of that annoying 1.5 second Global Cool Down we warriors have on most of our abilities :*( . This means that if you give me 3 secconds, I only get too use two of those abilities. Damn you GCD!!!

What You Should Do

Me: Ok now Mr. Dps Junky, I have educated you on the subject of threat.

Dps J: But what do I do with this new information?

Me: It's simple really. I want you to give me just a few seconds to generate threat before you attack.

Dps J: How many is a few?

Me: Fair question. Let me give you a simple guide line. If I only have to tank one mob at a time just give me one second, and for each extra mob add two seconds. So for example if I had to tank 2 at once give me 3 seconds, if I have to tank 3 give me 5 seconds, and if I have to tank 3 give me 7 seconds. So on and so forth.

Me: So I hope everyone has learned something today. Also I have bought a new phone so don't think I won't continue my experiments if you continue with your hateful, evil ways.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

How Many Are There?

The Rambling, Many More Words Than Are Needed, Question.

Lately I have been running a lot of heroics with people from another guild similar to mine, and with a bunch of people in my friends list who call on me when they need a tank. In fact I have done more out of guild heroics lately than those I've done with my guild. I recently asked the guild master of, lets call it our sister guild for want of a better term and ease of reference, why they invited me on so many heroic runs. The answer was that their guild tanks were hardly ever on and they found it very hard to get a good tank. That begged the next question "How many bad tanks are there out there?" . I hardly consider myself a good tank, a competent tank yes, but a good or great tank? No.

I have been described by some, strange and confused people as a great tank and let me tell you that ego rush is high and heavy. Right up until I screw up again that is, (Usually the two things happen in the same run) which brings me crashing back down to earth again with a satisfying karmal thump.

Anyway back to the point of this post I was just wondering how many bad tanks people have encountered and if the overall quality of is bad with the tanks who can tank being the exception rather than the rule. Rather like the hunter who can chain trap being the exception rather than the rule.

The Anecdote.

This part of the post harks back to that fun filled, mistake riddled time as a dps warrior, which I refer to as PvP week. It was 2 am (game time) and I was running Heroic Slave Pens, which holds the uncontested spot as the easiest heroic in the game. I was filling a dps spot and all the other spots were filled by guildies, bar the tank. Like I said it was 2 am and all our tanks were offline, so we had to bite the bullet and pug one. On a side note its amazing how three little letters can fill me with so much dread, the mere mention of a P.U.G. sends a shiver down my spine.

Anyway back to the story. We had two cc so when we were doing three man pulls nothing seemed amiss. Although when you only have one target you can sit a monkey at you PC, having bound a Shield Slam/Devastate/Revenge macro to every key, let it bash it's little simian heart out, and you have a seemingly decent tank. It was when we moved to the more complex pulls that things started to go wrong. On every occasion that he had to tank two mobs (also why the hell do we call them mobs? I mean a mob is a plural adjective which we are using to describe a single creature. Not at all relevant but it's been bugging me since I started playing the game.) the secondary target would go tearing after our healer who, unless I went to save him, got smushed. In addition he wasn't aware of what was happening with the cc'd mobs, so when something went wrong in the "back field" we had to deal with it as best we could. In the end we called it quits after the second boss (and countless wipes and near wipes).

In all fairness to the person in question he did try, like going after some of the mobs that headed for our healer, but did so without using intervene or intercept, which meant we basically had to stop dps on the primary target or pull aggro. He never tried blaming anyone else for the wipes, and owned up to not doing a very good job. Also he didn't know the instance very well which accounted for some of his mistakes. All of these things gave him a bushel of tanking brownie points from me, and I will be more than willing to group with him again when he's had a bit more experience.

Just thought I'd share one of my bad tank moments as a guide to what I consider a bad tank to be. Not a bad player (which he was not, I consider a bad player to be a personality thing more than anything else), but someone who is just not filling their role in the group properly.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Whoops

Mistakes R Us was supposed to be up here ... but I took so long to finish it that It's way down there :)

So if you could make the apropriate mental adjustments to my posting time line I would be most apreciative. If your mental faculties can't handle this trasitory time line too bad, because I cant be arsed to manualy change it's position.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Slow on Posting

Again I'm caught slacking on the posts, and yet again I come out with a plethora of excuses :)

The main excuse is that we now have enough attuned people in the guild to run 2 Kara teams instead of just going with whoever can come at the time, and I have been put in charge of organizing the B team. It's not called the B team it's called the Red team but since our guild leader took all the best geared people for his team thats realistically what it is. This suits me fine as I know the people I have and almost all are friendly and more importantly willing to learn and willing to obey instructions.

I have so far (after consulting with all my team members) selected the days of what will be a 4 day raiding week. I am going to implement a Zero-Sum Dkp system with rewards for loot distribution (Still have to inform the Guild leader about that but we need a formal loot system come hell or high water). The goal I have set myself is to down prince before the Blue team and as their members seem perma stuck on Illhoof it's looking good.

Proper raiding starts next week and spirits amongst my team are high. I know it's going to take time to gear them up properly, but hey it's gonna be fun.

All this organizing has left me with a seemingly (at least to me anyway) valid excuse to avoid posting.

Ok so it wasn't a plethora of excuses but at least it was a good one :)

PvP Week Has Ended

To the pleasure of a lot of people in my friends list my PvP week has come to an end, and I'm back tanking full time.
In the end I did so much PvE that I never got the honor I needed for that axe :( , I did however get a nice PvP chest piece.