To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1

02/17

• The drop rate of Frost Lotus, from herbs in Northrend, has been increased by 50%. (Source)

BEST.

NEWS.

EVER.

]]> http://stupidtank.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/frost-lotus-droprate-increased/feed/ 3 Tarsus http://stupidtank.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/hey-you-from-hor-yesterday/ http://stupidtank.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/hey-you-from-hor-yesterday/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:48:10 +0000 Tarsus http://stupidtank.wordpress.com/?p=795 ]]> Does line of sight mean anything to you?  I mean, the mob that’s killing you is at range.  How hard is this?

Answer: Pretty damn hard apparently.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs in my opinion when the random joes and janes from LFD cannot be bothered to do something as simple as stand behind a segment of wall for five seconds.  The concept of the “Line of Sight Pull” was one of the first things I learned in Tank School, right after “If the healer dies it’s your fault.”  Have these nublettes gotten so spoiled by repetitive AoE/Tank/Loot that when they come into a situation where you can’t do that their brains cannot understand “Stay behind the wall until I have threat”?

Dear Paladin.  This is not PeeVeePees.  You cannot just walk out there and soak up damage.  That goddamn rifleman and his mage buddy are going to fuck you up.  You cannot blame the healer for your own stupidty.  I know you are doing it.  She’s sitting right next to me.  Oh look you died first again.

Dear Warlock.  Yes I have vigilance.  No you can’t have it because the mage has it and she does more threat than you, especially when the entire deal with this room is that YOU STAND BEHIND THE GODDAMN WALL TO GET THEM TOGETHER AND AOE THEM DOWN. Do not cast your stun when they are standing in the doorway.  Cast Rain of Fire over here.  After I have them.  And now you’re dead too.

I’m not a Death Knight.  I have one ability to get them over here from range, and it’s on a longer cooldown than Death Grip.

And now the healer is dead.  And I’m dead.  You know what?  This is the third time we’ve died thanks the exact same chain of events.  My courtesy is expired, and I’ve a raid in 40 minutes.  Good luck finding another Tank and healer.  Oh, wait, they’ll leave your group too because this is the way you pull this room you lazy-no-strategy-having-never-ran-BRD-without-heirlooms-talentless-hacks.

The moral of this story is that the extent of my patience for two badges is 20 gold in repair bills.

/hate

After each region’s maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode.

We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids. (Source)

I will admit, I was expecting this development at some point, but this felt too soon.  Should I feel ashamed or something that Axiom was not among that “significant number of raids”?  Or, you know, even among those that had unlocked the Lich King?

I can’t say that I am.  I can’t really speak for Seri, or others in charge, but since we’ve focused our time on working on the non-attempt locked bosses I’m assuming that they were laboring under the same assumption that I was – namely that we’d at least have a few weeks before the counter was removed from normal mode.

For those of you feeling like Blizzard just poked your Bloodrage button – I can understand.  The Lich King had only been unlock-able a week.  You could be forgiven for thinking that Blizzard only put this “feature” into ICC to put the reigns on the top tier of raiding guilds.  Which is to say it failed utterly since the Lich King was dead 24 hours after the potential to do so was made available.

The effect was really only to make it more difficult for the next tier of raiders to take down (or even take shots at!) the Lich King that first week.  A kind of double kick in the no-no parts of raider pride.  You cannot say now “Well, we’re not a top 100 raid guild – but at least we killed the Lich King when he required attempts to do so.”  Either you killed him in the first week it was available – or you’re just a scrub.

Oh.  Wait, there is that matter of the buff.  So there is some hope left to distinguish yourself from the unwashed masses.

Better do it quick though – no telling when Blizzard will start implementing that one.  Recent developments indicate it could be as soon as next week.

Quantum Fluid Theory?

No matter what system you use for determining your list of desired upgrades, before you do boot up your armory profile and consider this little bit of advice:

An upgrade is only as good as the piece it is replacing.

Take, if you will, the case of Tarsus’ gloves. They’re Tier 8 (Ulduar) set gear.  I’m not still wearing them because they’re some sort of super itemized awesome piece – I’m wearing them because my Tier 9 options were downright underwhelming.  Given the sparsity of hit on Tier 9 gear, that 49 hit rating was quite valuable – and they didn’t exactly have another option available.  In terms of my list of priority – gloves were then at the bottom.

Now looking at what is available in Tier 10, I have other options.  Specifically I have an attraction to the Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards, now that (come Tuesday) they have bonus armor on them.  Having that clear of an upgrade over my existing gloves moves them substantially up the priority list (now at priority one, since that is my last piece of Non-Heroic Tier 8 gear).

Sometimes this is easier than others, as described in the example above.  It is, however, more difficult when you have to weigh the impact on your entire gear set.  For example, you could pick up Last Word – but it has no defense, no hit, no expertise – hell it doesn’t have anything on it by stamina and that proc.  That is a pretty hefty hit when you compare it to my Sorthalis – I need to find some of those stats elsewhere before I can equip it.  Down on the priority list it goes (despite replacing gear of lower Tier).  I still need a weapon upgrade, but maybe I can stand to find some new boots first.

So, when weighing spending your DKP or just making up your list – remember that your tank is the sum of their parts and give some thought to your upgrades and prioritize.  You never know, there might be another tank in your raid that needs that piece more than you and you need to know how generous you can be.

Oh Bear! Though thy bottom is great in size

And thy avoidance gimped in Icecrown raids;

You have a character that is a prize

With An aspect that never truly fades.

‘Tis not thy health – though ’tis matched by no one.

‘Tis not thy mitigation – though quite nice.

‘Tis not thy dance – if amusing and fun.

‘Tis not thy gear – no plate to sacrifice.

In Kitty form you’re of the highest rank,

The time to see you’re the best half-a-tank.

Props to all those bears out there – your ability to swap from DPS to Tank to DPS in the middle of a fight continues to amaze me.

Ghostcrawler

Protection damage in 3.3.2
The damage you’re going to do depends a lot on your gear, raid buffs and personal style. But I think these are in the ballpark for an Icecrown 25 guild.

Shield Slam — hits for maybe 3500.
Revenge — hits for maybe 3000.
Devastate — hits for maybe 2000.

Over the course of a raid, Shield Slam and Devastate might do about the same total damage, with Revenge doing 50% of that. (In other words, if we ignore all other abilities, you’d have a pie chart with a 40%, 40%, and 20% slice, though Revenge can be pretty variable.) So at first glance, you might imagine a world in which Devastate eclipses all other abilities. But let’s consider them in more detail. You’re probably using Shield Slam half as often as you’re hitting Devastate because of the cooldown. Are you going to give up that much damage packaged into one GCD? Now Revenge on the other hand might be a contender for another Devastate GCD, but consider the enormous rage bargain that is Revenge, even that doesn’t seem like a big concern.  (Source)

I’m not sure why, but this really pisses me off, because my numbers don’t look like that.  Tarsus is much more like:

Shield Slam — hits for maybe 2500.
Revenge — hits for maybe 2900.
Devastate — hits for maybe 1900.

Now, the Revenge and Devastate numbers are off by 100, I can handle that.  That Shield Slam number, that – THAT gets under my skin, especially because it’s Shield Slam that is getting the nerf-bat.  I wasn’t precisely riled up about the nerf before, but now I’m feeling the itch.

So, I have to ask, what the hell is wrong with poor Tarsus?  Is he some weird mutant that just can’t get his Shield Slam up?  I don’t precisely stack block, so maybe I shouldn’t be complaining, but come on here – I’m 1000 under where I “should be” according to the crab.  It’s not like I’m some strangely geared aberration.

Serious WTF here on my part.  I have to wonder where these numbers come from.  Maybe the mystic land where Prot Warriors are overpowered or some crap.

On a side note, updates are being sparse because of real life issues impacting when I have time to write.  These are good sorts of real life issues, so nothing to worry about, but they are time consuming so apologies if I keep missing regularly scheduled posts as has been happening.

Yet, expectations are high, as is performance pressure.  Tanking is a lot about confidence.  You are, after all, the front line.  So that nervousness is itself working against you.  The tag line of LFG instancing, “Gogogogogo,” doesn’t help this situation much.  No one wants to be rushed.

So if you want to tank, take the following tip from the Stupid Cow: If you know where you are going, everything else is just heroic strike spam.  You can read the strategy on Tank Spot, or watch a video even.  Boss strategies are about research more than anything.  But getting lost is  not something you can prepare for very well.  In my experience, no video or map can replace the actual experience of running it through.

In some instances, this is cake.  You can’t exactly get lost in the Halls of Reflection.  In others, such as Sunken Temple, it would be easy to get lost.  As the tank, you control the pace of the group it’s true, but more importantly you control where the group goes.  If you know that, you’re already on the way there.  If you don’t, maybe you should run the instance using a character you are more comfortable with.

THEN come back and tank it.

Because after that, you’re talking about either things you can prepare for outside of game (boss strategies, etc) or things that even the best tanks would be hard pressed to compensate for (bad LFG puggers).  Everything else you either get by tanking, or just knowing where you are going.

That is how you get from where you are to tanking.  Run the instance on your other spec/toon.  Consult your favorite strategy site.  And pick up your shield and go.

You can get to “Gogogogo” later.  It’s not like they can do this without the tank.

In this drama, I play the tank with the easier job – actually tanking Rotface.  Now, he can melee pretty hard, but mainly My job is to keep him in the middle of the room, and play monkey in the middle with him and the DPS.  By that, I mean that when he sprays, the DPS runs behind him, and right before he goes back to melee I step in front of him.  It keeps the DPS up by making them move only the once.

The harder job in this fight goes to a Paladin tank, kiting the big slime around the room.  There are several reasons for this:  First and most importantly is it gives the kiting tank control of dispelling Mutated Infection.  Second, Paladins have quite good ranged threat capacity. And Third, should it be necessary, the Paladin can use Blessing of Freedom to run through the green slime pools without be slowed down.

We have this execution down really well, we on the tank team.  Yet, despite this, the following problems occur:

• A shaman (generally) pulls healing threat on the small slime that spawns right after Mutated Infection is dispelled, resulting in a small slime in the raid.  Supposedly, this is impossible, but I’ve seen it often enough to know that this is not really true.
• Same as above, but as the result of the mutated infection victim dying.
• During the Unstable Ooze Explosion, we run out too early, spreading the explosion way too far and killing people.
• Same as above, but too late and getting people with lag killed.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we can execute this dance of death repeatedly without incident very very often.  However, the major block for us right now is the fact that each time the dance gets a little faster (and hence, the above conditions happen more often) and eventually it nails us.

And here is the clincher after a fashion:

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell’s effect if they so wish.(Source)

We have a limited time to do this with our pride as raiders intact.  Now, my understanding is that this won’t start up until after the Lich King is available – but if we’re stuck trying to get to Putricide until after that buff goes off – it is going to hurt.

Ghostcrawler

It should be noted that we have been warned about some potential in-coming nerfs to Protection Warriors.  You may read certain choice responses here, here, and here (reply #385).  In case you missed the information involved , allow me to get you up to date (from oldest to newest):

Warbringer changes in 3.3.2
In the next content patch the current plan is to change Warbringer a bit so that it no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares but Intervene would remain unaffected.

We’ll see if any further changes come down the pipeline. (Source)

Potential changes to Shield Slam
We are also considering some changes to Shield Slam to where it won’t affect players in normal tanking gear but it will affect the scaling of block value for those who are stacking it. This isn’t guaranteed as we still want to make sure it doesn’t have a real negative effect on PvE, but in turn we may have the threat caused by Shield Slam just straight increased. We’ll see how this goes as we test it internally. (Source)

Protection warriors in PvP
There are numbers in between 1 and 10. Players have a bad habit of viewing everything in terms of extremes. Yes we want Protection to be viable in PvP and most likely it still will be. Nerfing them because they are overpowered is not the same as them being useless.

Expecting the forum-visiting WoW community to ever come to a consensus on anything is unrealistic. That said, Protection warriors in PvP wasn’t one of the arguments where there were a lot of very passionate souls on both sides. Many players suspected or were outright convinced that Prot was overpowered at worst or at least really frustrating to play against. On the other hand, we’ve posted several times that if the totality of their beef is just seeing Prot in PvP at all, then they’re out of luck.

These arguments are somewhat similar to those rogues saying “But we’re supposed to do high damage” and seeing nothing wrong with being 1000 to 2000 dps higher than others in their group. Yes you’re supposed to be in PvP. You’re not supposed to own PvP.

If you’re one of those players with no interest in PvP and just don’t want to see your tanking potential hurt, then I am slightly more sympathetic, but then again you should know what I’m going to say by now. WoW is a game with PvP and PvE components. Just because one of those isn’t of interest to you personally doesn’t mean we should neglect it. (And as I’ve said, we aren’t interested in nerfing Prot warriors who are actually tanking.) (Source)

The problem with Warbringer
The problem with the PvP side of Warbringer is that when you consider prot warrior versus mage (just as an example), there was nothing a mage could do to a well versed warrior. The warrior carries a lot of stuns, silences, and then any attempt to root him is broken by multiple abilities. So then the warrior’s teammate (like a hunter) is just doing tons of damage while the target has no defenses.

For the other side of this change, we certainly don’t design 5-player or raid content with the assumption that the tank has Warbringer (or a way out of snares and roots in general). We understand that it can be a big help in specific situations but we don’t feel it’s the only option in any PvE circumstances. (Source)

Patch 3.3.x nerfs for prot warriors
Let’s look first at the Warbringer change.

Will it nerf them for PvP? Yes. Aside from stuns and Dismantle, rooting or snaring the Prot warrior is the major way to keep him off of you. Considering all of the stuns and silences that Prot has, when they can also jump out of every Frost Nova with Warbringer, then there’s not much in the way of skill a mage can employ to stay alive. They just get countered in every way.

Will it nerf them for PvE? Yes, but really slightly. I’m not sure I can ever remember a case in my WoW-playing history where my warrior or some other tank caused a wipe because of a root, so even if it did happen, it can’t happen that much or be that memorable. Warriors certainly won’t get sat because of some new Achilles’ heel and we don’t design encounters around the assumption that tanks can’t be rooted. The important part of Warbringer from a PvE perspective, removing the stance restrictions, is still intact.

Now the damage change. As Bornakk posted recently, what we essentially did was look at some of the successful Prot PvP characters and compare them to some of the Prot tanks out there. We nerfed the block conversion to Shield Slam damage so that it would hit the PvP guy without really hitting the PvE guy. (The PvP warriors aren’t stacking a ton of Shield Block Value, but they do have a lot of Strength which also converts to block for purposes of making Shield Slam hit harder — many of these guys are wearing PvE dps plate.)

Will it nerf them for PvP? Yes. We want Prot to be able to hit reasonably hard, but they also need to pay some price for their massive survivability. We thought the Warbringer change alone would nerf the warriors vs. e.g. mages but wouldn’t control their damage. Those big Shield Slam crits should go down a lot.

Will it nerf them for PvE? Probably not, or at least not much. If you tank with a lot of Strength or SBV, you might see your Shield Slams go down, but that’s why we buffed the threat of Shield Slam to compensate.

Again, keep the changes in perspective. We want Prot to be PvP viable. We don’t want Prot warriors to dominate PvP or have everyone feel like they need one for their team. Likewise, we want Prot to do higher damage than the almost trivial damage that they did in BC. But that doesn’t mean they need to be competitive with the dps while they’re tanking. (Source)

Shield Slam changes
The diminishing returns on shield slam damage now starts to kick in when shield block value is more than 1960 (at level 80). It maxes at behaving as if your shield block value is 2072 when your block value is actually 3160 (again, at level 80). Remember this includes the scaling from both shield block value on gear AND shield block value from Strength. (Source)

Prot Warrior DPS
We understand that warrior damage is on the low end but regarding the raid progression, it’s a hard case to say that your wipe on Festergut (as an example) was caused by the difference between tank damage when the dps from focused classes like rogue, warlock, etc. can probably improve to beat the enrage timer. (Source)

[...] I honestly think it’s hard to argue that your choice of tank often costs you a kill because of the dps of the tank. Often those numbers are rounding errors compared to the damage capable by the dps specs in the raid. However, I don’t think you even need to invoke that argument. I think it just feels crappy when your dps is lower than other tanks.

I don’t think the block diminishing returns exacerbates this much to be honest, but it was a problem that was already there. We’d like to buff Prot sustained dps in a way that isn’t risky for PvP.

(Standard: “no promises” implied.)

I’ll say again that we have nothing against threat modifiers. Some of you need to stop treating them as if they are cockroaches to be stomped out whenever they appear. Bonus threat is really the only way to keep tank damage lower than dps damage but threat higher than dps threat. It only becomes a concern when A) the threat modifiers are flat (because then when the dps do more damage with gear, you aren’t doing more threat with gear) or B) you’re spamming abilities that do lots of threat but no real damage, because that just feels lame (and really we’re just talking Sunder Armor here, which nobody spams anymore anyways). (Source)

If you have followed the links that I brought forth in the beginning of the post, you will have probably come to the conclusion that there is not much to say about this other than what has already been said.  I will add, however, my following two copper pieces to the issue:

• I could care less about the Nerf to Warbringer.  The strength of it was always in that it enabled you to use Charge in combat and in Defensive Stance.  I can’t even remember the last time I used it to remove a snare.  Freya Hard Mode… maybe?
• I sincerely doubt the numbers cited for where diminishing returns kick  for Shield Slam in will make it into live.  They’ll probably be upped once developers see how easy it is to hit the cap even without bonus block value on your items.
• This seems like an incredible waste of time for the development team considering that, with Block Value going the way of the Dodo in a few months, this entire conversation will be irrelevant.  That said, I can’t get my rage up too high on a nerf that has a definitive end date.
• Yet again, we see how PvP and Arenas in particular have the capacity to make dramatic changes for the PvE aspect of the game.  If any reader can think of ways that the PvE game influenced the PvP game in reverse, please comment.  I’m racking my brain on that one.
• And, then there is Mr. C. Christian Moore.  Sometimes, displays of ignorance speak for themselves.  This is one of those times.  Make sure you read the comments after his article I linked at the top.  If I ever let loose with the kind of platitudes about PvP of the sort therein concerning PvE – I hope someone will put me down.  My advice to Mr. Moore is along similar lines – stick to writing and commenting about PvP.

A parting thought:  Clearly there is a great divide between people who play the game for PvP and those for PvE as this change so clearly demonstrates.  Recently, I have seen and heard a great deal about leveling almost exclusively through the Random LFG tool.  It makes you wonder if one day there will be a similar divide between solo play and group play in the game.

That’s it though, I’m out.

Does your red meter feel bloated or full?

Does your usual regimen of Devastate or Shield Slam just not do it for you anymore?

If any of these symptoms describes you, or you have ever felt the sudden urge to crush the cell phone you have bought for your significant other*, you may suffer from a common Warrior condition known as WTMR°.  The causes for this condition vary, from glyphs to spec, to traumatic brain injury.  But no matter the cause of your WTMR, there is hope.

My name is Dr. Tarsus Grimtotem, and though I am not an actual doctor I play one on Television.  Actually, no, I don’t even play one on television, I am just wearing a white lab coat and appear trustworthy.  Either way, I am totally qualified to inform you about an exciting new treatment for WTMR: Heroicstrikacin¹.  Unlike other available treatments for WTMR, Heroicstrikacin doesn’t eat your global cooldown, so you will be ready for that taunt whenever the opportunity arises.  Better yet, Heroicstrikacin doesn’t require a prescription, meaning you can use it whenever the need arises.  It contains no harsh chemicals, and relies solely on wholesome natural processes to relieve your WTMR.  In clinical trials, Heroicstrikacin was show to reduce WTMR by up to 100%.  You can try Heroicstrikacin for free for up to 10 days by visiting this website.

You should not use Heroicstrikacin in low rage environments to avoid having dead healers.  Side effects include mood swings, inability to use other tanking abilities, and painful debilitating hand injuries.  Should you experience any of these effects under the influence of Heroicstrikacin, you should immediately seek medical attention.

If you cannot afford your medications, Blizzard Pharmaceuticals may be able to help.  Actually, no they won’t, but we can always hope they will pay for your subscription.  Er.  Prescription.

* Observed in clinical testing.

° Way Too Much Rage

¹ Generic Name: Heroic Strike