World Of Warcraft

My warrior used dual weapons.

Which is ok, like all two-handed weaponry, when not taking on a tank role. If you're in a group and tanking, though, your role is to draw the aggro and take the damage well enough so that the healers can keep up. Your weapon damage is only useful in that role for the part it plays in drawing aggro and keeping it off the DPS'ers.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Yes, exactly. If you are playing a tanking role, you need to have an appropriate gear set that allows you to survive damage and hold threat on the mobs. You need to know when and how to pull, how to mitigate large bursts of damage, how to keep groups of mobs from running amok, and how to taunt mobs away from squishy targets like healers and mages. You must develop a keen sense of positioning so that you can place mobs in the spot where they need to be, move them around the battlefield without getting hit from behind, avoid situational damage, etc.

As a healer, you need to understand whom to heal and when. You have to know how to prioritize the delivery of heals — can the tank stay alive for a few seconds while you top off the DPS? You have to learn when each of your heals is most useful. You need to not overheal so much that you run out of mana. Most importantly, you need to learn how not to die yourself: a dead healer equals a dead tank.

Even as a DPS, you have to learn stuff. The first and most important is what to kill and when. If the tank isn't hitting it, you shouldn't be either. If there is crowd control being used, you need to know (a) when it's your turn to apply it, and (b) how not to break it. You have to stay alert for when you may need to interrupt casters, stop runners, and use your stuns or other special abilities. You have to learn positioning: for melee, this means attacking mobs from the rear when possible; for ranged, this means where to stand to avoid pulling other mobs, etc. All DPS must be aware of when they need to move to avoid ground targeted effects. Most importantly, you have to know when not to DPS. Pulling aggro off the tanks is bad. Dead player = 0 DPS.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yeah... I don't think I would have been useful at all on a team. I don't much like tanking, and if I have to actually pay attention beyond "press keys to smack things" as a DPS, then I can get confused.

Incidentally, this is why I like City Of Heroes. On a team, I really can just smack things with wild abandon.

edited 7th Aug '09 2:50:51 PM by Matrix

My paladin was always a crappy healer. Great tank though.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

I has a BE Pally that I got to 20, and I played it as DPS.

You've only played a character to lv. 20 right? Don't worry about DP Sing, tanking and what not now. Endgame is a lot easier than it sounds and the leveling process will teach you much of what you need to know (hopefully).

Sorry, I can't hear you from my FLYING METAL BOX!

The difference between tanking and DPS was never that big until level 40 or so. And as they make leveling easier, that number moves up.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

The leveling process will teach you nothing about how to play at endgame. Running instances, maybe, but leveling no. I don't know why people keep saying that.

Edit: Even as dps, leveling teaches you nothing about aggro, and your ability choices are often designed to maximize burst and efficiency rather than average dps. The only thing at endgame that at all resembles leveling is doing daily quests for money.

edited 11th Aug '09 6:10:49 PM by Clarste

Agreed. The only way to learn to be a good group player is to get in groups and practice.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's why I leveled my tankadin in instances. Had a friend that was a healer and we just grabbed any three dps and went to town over and over again to whatever dropped gear we needed. I leveled in some of the best blue tanking plate available. But for most people the best way to go is questing in a dps build, endgame will be there at 80.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

I'll be honest - it's really easy to tell when a player hasn't spent much if any time grouped. Get them in a dungeon and they do really spectacularly stupid things. As a player who's been in a raiding guild since I hit 60 back in classic WoW, I can tell you that I stay out of pick-up groups for that very reason. My time is too valuable to train up some newbie who powerleveled to 80 — much less the idiots who paid someone to do it or got their account from someone else. I want to spend the minimum time possible in a dungeon, get my emblems/daily quest items, and get out.

As just one example of dumb, I saw a level 75 Warlock in Icecrown the other day asking to join a Trial of the Crusader raid

 ^* in the LocalDefense channel. So Yeah.

Now... to be fair, I don't expect players running normal or low level dungeons to have the same level of skill. If I'm on my alt and working through content, I'll happily show someone the ropes. But if you are that clueless inexperienced, you have no business being in heroic or raid dungeons.

edited 13th Aug '09 1:30:02 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Good news, they're revamping the Onyxia raid for World Of Warcraft's 5th anniversary! Complete with updated loot and a chance at a 310% mount modeled after Onyxia herself!

Proof here.

Squeeee!!!

edited 13th Aug '09 6:15:33 AM by Neo_Crimson

Sorry, I can't hear you from my FLYING METAL BOX!

Yeah, I saw that last night, too, and was the one who broke the news to my guild. Much Squeeing ensued.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Currently getting a little ticked off by how much Horde sucks in lvl 6x battlegrounds on my server (Crushridge). Alliance wins 3/4 of the time. Horde players' only tactics seem to be to run one at a time into the enemy to get picked off. It's annoying because I'm there trying to learn how to win, not how to die stupid deaths ...

A brighter future for a darker age.

I've noticed that too, on certain battlegrounds at least. For me it breaks down like this.

Warsong Gulch: Horde loses...alot. Wins are rare but not impossible.

Arathi Basin: Horde kicks ass. I have literally never lost a AB game ever.

Alterac Valley: Like WSG but Horde gets owned even harder. I've never gotten close to winning one.

Eye of the Storm: Never played but I hear Horde does well.

Strand of the Ancients: No clue.

Ilse of Conquest: It's too new to make a judgement on.

Wintergrasp: On my server Horde did extremely well here up until a month ago. Now it's about 50/50.

I think the distinction comes from the different tactics each side uses. Horde employs the "divide and conquer strategy", while the Alliance uses "stick together and Zerg Rush everything in sight!". The latter is precisely the strategy needed for WSG and AV.

edited 13th Aug '09 7:31:24 PM by Neo_Crimson

Sorry, I can't hear you from my FLYING METAL BOX!

Horde vs. Alliance varies widely per server, or so I heard. On Vek'nilash (US), Horde tend to be much better at one-on-one fights and dominates anywhere they can fight Alliance with even numbers or better.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Exactly, but the Alliance makes up for it for never, ever, being alone.

There's a saying on my server. "When you fight the Alliance, you fight the entire Alliance".

Sorry, I can't hear you from my FLYING METAL BOX!

Huh, we have something like that on my server: "twelve year old griefers hunt in packs." Doesn't have quite the same ring but it gets the point across.

Seriously, the alliance needs to grow up with the barrens attacks.

For the horde!

edited 14th Aug '09 5:11:29 AM by Fenrah

When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt, run in little circles, wave your arms and shout.

Your doing it wrong. It's FOR THE HORDE!!! Bolded, all caps, and with three exclamation points. Remember that.

Sorry, I can't hear you from my FLYING METAL BOX!

Yeah, but I'm mostly a *mumbleBloodelfmumble* warlock, so...

edited 14th Aug '09 5:18:48 AM by Fenrah

When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt, run in little circles, wave your arms and shout.

Alliance needs to grow up with the Barrens attacks.

Then tell your buddies to stop attacking Astranaar. :-)

I tend to leave the Barrens alone. Although if I'm in the area and feeling a bit naughty, I'll happily trash Sun Rock Retreat in Stonetalon. Not that anyone is likely to notice...

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's the exact same tactics difference on my server's battlegrounds; Alliance sticks together, and you rarely find just one of them. Concentrated force beats dispersed force at that one spot; Alterac Valley, with its conquer-and-destroy-and-move-on mechanism, is very suited to that. Higher level characters in the B Gs are also willing to stick around or check back on captured things that need to be held.

I think Horde appeals to the individualist, authority-shunning, don't-order-me-around personality; at least, that's what I see a lot. Lots of combat individuals, each often pretty good at fighting but with no tactics to speak of except CHAAARGE!!!

The other thing I see is that battleground participation tends to follow the winners; because Alliance wins all the damn time, they can always get 40 players for AV while Horde struggles to get 25-30 most battles. People like being on the winning side.

Fortunately most of the experienced Alliance players on my server will be leveling out of my bracket (61-70 in AV) very soon.

And yes, we do much better in AB, and somewhat better in WG.

A brighter future for a darker age.

What's with those people that run like five or six identical cloned characters and run around with all of them together? Is that even allowed? I guess they must be paying for that many accounts, so maybe Blizzard don't care.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Ah, someone met a multiboxer. Shaman?