world of warcraft

Return of the middle-aged MMOer (is that a word?)

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Asation, from http://www.swtor.com/

 

This really is turning into a yearly blog!   Maybe I will try to rectify that.  I was thinking of doing Nanowrimo (again) this year, and my decision not to do so has freed up a huge amount of time that I wouldn’t otherwise have had!   So, time to write about gaming again.

I’m still trying to balance gaming with “real life”.  When I quit SW:TOR about three years ago, I realised that spending hours in front of a computer screen was not good for my health, my fitness, or my figure.   I got fit, I lost weight, and I cut down my gaming time dramatically.    I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, that has to be a conscious decision.   If I didn’t make that decision, I’d quite happily sit for hours, playing games, while no doubt drinking wine and ordering takeaways (no time for cooking and washing up!)  I have to accept that it’s kind of addictive for me.

However, it works the other way too: the less I play, the less I’m drawn to playing, oddly enough.   I’d still rather do it than housework, of course, but it’s not like it was a few years ago, when I could happily have spent the whole day staring at the screen, given the chance.

And the less I play, the less social gaming is.  I don’t have the time and experience to do “dungeons” in ESO or SW:TOR, so they have become solo games.   PVP didn’t appeal terribly much in either of those for different reasons (I wasn’t wild about it in SW:TOR and in ESO, Cyrodill was so huge and I kept dying and having to run back and get killed on the way … rather frustrating and boring).   I did have a stint in WoW recently and that was much more social as there was so much group content that didn’t require a long time to organise and do: dungeons, old raids and achievements, world bosses, etc.   I enjoyed grouping up with other guild members.  Even raiding was quite accessible.   I know many people hate that WoW has become so casual-friendly, but I have to say, that if you are casual, then … it’s friendly.   It’s easy to gear up and you don’t feel excluded from the good stuff.

As for the hugely anticipated (by me), ESO: what happened there?  (So long since I last posted!).   Well, I loved it at the beginning, had fun doing the starter dungeons, but being a slow leveler I once again went through the experience of being stuck in what seemed like a single player game: levelling through quiet areas and lonely delves, not feeling I had the skill for veteran dungeons, and not managing to find a group for them at a suitable time (I did try to organise one, but the timing seemed to be wrong for everyone else).    It was SW:TOR all over again!

I still pop in now and then as it’s now buy to play, and called Tamriel Unlimited.  But oddly enough, I’m back in SW:TOR.   Some of my guild have returned to it and as it’s now free to play I thought I’d give it another try, and finish off the main class storyline for my inquisitor at least.  The story is actually turning out to be a little disappointing, but never mind: my misgivings about the game still apply, but I’d forgotten how pretty and atmospheric it was.

What I really want is to play Witcher 3 and Dragon Age:Inquisition, but my computer says no.  Maybe in a year or so, when they’re in a sale, I’ll buy them and put them on my son’s computer.    Meanwhile SW:TOR is providing a nice combination of single player story and MMO.

Return of the middle-aged MMOer (is that a word?)

Quests, a sense of purpose, grinding and replay value in GW2

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It has been interesting in Guild Wars 2 to only have one quest in my quest “log”.  Rather than collecting yellow exclamation marks, you are approached by NPCs in the areas you pass through, asking for help, and are informed when an “event” is happening near you.  It’s a pleasant change in that it feels more organic and free.

I haven’t been a big fan of World of Warcraft’s revamped questing in Cataclysm.  There is so little choice, little chance to find group quests (almost everything is solo now), and you’re forced down a certain route.  My son and I found this when we levelled characters together. I’d been keen to show him some of my favourite zones, and flew him to Feralas, only to find that we were unable to pick up quests because we were below the level for the zone.   The only way to level through questing in WoW now is to do easy quests, solo.

Although I haven’t grouped officially since beta in GW2 (the guild still seems bugged, and I can’t join it, so have been solo-ing while waiting), the “quests” seem ideal for groups of two or more.   Just turn up and join in.  If my son’s laptop was up to it, this might have been quite a nice game to play together.  I believe that levels are adjusted when you enter different zones, so a high level player can group with a low level player.
World of Warcraft’s system works very well now in the sense of telling a story.  Because you’re led down a defined path, you have no choice but to follow the story of the area.  I wondered if GW2s quests would lack story and a sense of purpose?  But so far, I think there’s a sense of purpose with the  quests.  A village is in danger, for instance, and you’re trying to protect it by fighting off invaders.  Or you’re trying to escort somebody (I do sometimes miss the point of the escort quests, often joining in late).  There is the opportunity to feel that you’ve achieved something.   The personal story involves more, well, story.

However …. there’s something not quite right about the system at the moment.  The actual meat of the quests is usually pretty banal, consisting of killing things, talking to things and picking things up and either using them or handing them in.  To be fair, that’s probably not much different from most MMOs.  The main problem was that I seemed to run out of “hearts” long before I’d outleveled the starter zone.  I realise that you’re not supposed to run from quest to quest, completing them, as you might do while leveling in other games.  But I was spending quite a bit of time on exploration, gathering and crafting, and some of my leveling had come through those activities.   Not wanting to have to grind, I went to the human starter area.  I picked up the heart quests, went for some vistas and skill points, got a couple of levels and returned to the asura area.

Two problems with that.

One, I’d been planning on making umpteen alts.  GW2 may be free to play, but I’d always allowed for buying extra character slots, as I did in GW1.   I was going to have at least one character of each race.  But now I don’t feel quite so inspired to create a human as I’ve already played through the starter area.

Two, it started to dawn on me that visiting the other areas is mandatory.  I’m going to need those skill points for every character.  Some of the heart NPCs sell cooking ingredients that I need, so presumably I’ll have to go to all the starter areas if I want to “unlock” all the ingredients.  Maybe I’ve missed something and I’m wrong on these points (perhaps there are so many skill points that you don’t need to go looking for them, and perhaps what unlocks at the heart vendors adjusts to your character to make sure you get everything you need in your area – I don’t know).   But at the moment, it looks as if every character is going to have to “do” every zone, even picking up skill points and unlocking particular heart vendors.

Quests, a sense of purpose, grinding and replay value in GW2

You wait for ages, then three come along at once!

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Goldshire, where you can now catch a bus. Or gryphon.

The three buses games coming along at once being WoW and LOTRO expansions, and Guild Wars 2.

But first, where have I been?  I left you wondering how I would deal with my misgivings about SW:TOR.  Would changing to healer and PVPing save the day?  Unfortunately not.  Shortly after I last posted it was announced that level 50 players would receive a free month.  Just about everybody in my guild (and everybody playing SW:TOR, judging from the empty levelling planets) was level 50, so it felt as if a few of us were being singled out to pay for a month that everybody else was getting free.  I put a last effort into leveling, and sadly, it killed the game for me.  I was logging in and “working” at the game, when I’d rather have been doing other things, or when I had a headache.  At the same time, I was starting to realise that I spent too much time on gaming.  Maybe it took being “forced” to game (to avoid being financially penalised) to drive home that it wasn’t good for me.  I decided to cut down my gaming time, and to get fitter.  This was made easier by my new lack of interest in SW:TOR.

I have a lifetime LOTRO membership, so I decided to spend some of my now limited game time there.  There was so much to catch up on, including the last expansion.  To my surprise (given all the bad things you hear about free to play games), there seemed to be an active role-play community and a great atmosphere.  Seasonal events were buzzing with people, many carefully outfitted in cosmetic gear.   My son started a new character and we did skirmishes together.  I finally got my main (but not max level) character out of dark Mirkwood and into the light in a new, bustling area.  I realise that I am advantaged by being a lifetime member, but I still think that LOTRO is pretty good for a free game.  I will be returning now and then.  There’s the Rohan expansion out in September, with mounted combat.  I’ll probably wait until after release and buy it with turbine points.

For some time, I’d been keeping an eye on Guild Wars 2.   As it’s also free to play (once purchased) I’d pretty much made up my mind to buy it if it looked good.  I was hearing very good things about it, that it was the future of MMOs, and finally, the big draw was that many from my SW:TOR guild were going to be playing, so I paid the rather hefty £50 for the digital version and had a go at the beta.  My verdict, from my limited playtime (and given my lack of gaming knowledge), is that it’s not quite as revolutionary as it seems.   From what I’d read, it seemed as if hundreds of events could happen, but when I played it, it seemed to be the same old events happening over and over.  I worry about how much fun it will be when the leveling areas are quieter.  I loved the public quests in WAR, but they lost their appeal when I had to try to solo them after the first month.  Crafting looks more functional than fun (oh, for Everquest’s furniture making, or even the gadgets in WoW!), but I’ve only given it a cursory look.    I can’t put my finger on why, but I’m not quite as excited about the launch as I thought I’d be.  Maybe I’m just burned out with launches.

Meanwhile, I’ve been returning to my first MMO, World of Warcraft.   It doesn’t seem long since I was writing about the last expansion, Cataclysm, but time goes more quickly as you get older.  No really, it does.  If GW2 is the sequel everybody loves, Mists of Pandaria seems to be the expansion everybody hates.  And yet, I’ve been excited about it for months.  The more I hear about it being geared to casual players, the more I think it’s going to suit me.  Pet battles will take me back to the days of playing Pokemon with my son when he was little.  Fishing and farming are right up my street.  I love the eastern theme.  The new areas are beautiful.   I think it’s going to be exciting to not be able to fly again, and to see the world from the ground first of all.  I hate to say it, but I’m more excited about this than about GW2.  But I’m keeping an open mind.
Ah, World of Warcraft, my first (MMO) love!  It has an open world feel that SW:TOR was definitely lacking, and that I haven’t got from GW2 yet.  I know the graphics are cartoony, but I love that you don’t need a good computer to play.  Recently, instead of going off to do something else during long gryphon flights, I’ve been watching the world go by, and it’s gorgeous.

You wait for ages, then three come along at once!

In Real Life

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I watched a great video about a pesonal experience of game addiction over on WoW Insider the other night.

I thought the video was very well done, but afterwards I kept thinking about it.   I’m not an achiever in the way that this guy was, but I still feel the compulsion to log in.   There have been times when, I will admit, I’ve played World of Warcraft when I should have been doing other things (such as housework.  Mainly housework).    I wouldn’t turn down real life engagements just for game commitments the way Sevrin did, but …. I’ve been tempted.   In other words, World of Warcraft hasn’t ruined my life, but I can see how I could have let it.   Maybe I’ve been protected by being older and wiser.  Or have I?  Every so often, I read a story about a mother who is a gaming addict to the extent that she neglects her children (not that a father would be seen as neglecting their children in quite the same way, maybe).   And of course, there’s the wonderful Clara from “The Guild” (the one I always feel I have to choose when the question “Which character out of The Guild is most like you?” comes up).  Mums are not immune.

In fact, mums might be even more vulnerable in some ways.  Part of the reason I got into gaming in the first place was because there wasn’t much opportunity for anything “in real life” with a small child in the house.  Once he was asleep, I was on my own.  One of the fun things about MMOs in particular was having a bit of social contact during the evenings, at a time when I was unable to leave the house.   That combination of being alone and confined to the house could be dangerous in terms of gaming addiction.  It’s not possible to just leave the house and do something else.

But regardless of circumstances, I suppose that Sevrin felt drawn into the game world in the same way that we all are.   I last posted about my urge to “collect” approval and light side points in SW:TOR, so can understand his desire to collect pets and mounts.  I can understand that he felt as if he was “famous” in the game and had a status that he didn’t have outside of it, even though I don’t think I feel the need for in-game fame myself.  I can particularly understand the longing to log in and escape to a different world.   It’s so easy to do, and such a pleasant break from the grind.

Sevrin has since been interviewed and explained more about how his “addiction” came about.  It has been interesting reading for me, as a parent of a son who is planning working towards a particularly demanding career (something which would be incompatible with gaming addiction).   My son is a very casual gamer, but recently we’ve been playing together a lot, and I should really consider whether I am encouraging him to immerse himself too much in that tempting world.

In Real Life

Mists of Pandaria

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I don’t care what the people say, I’m excited about this expansion.  There’s so much to love.  WoW has always been about the cartoonish, the exaggerated and the comical for me, so I see no problem in playing a “kung fu panda”.   My first main character was a gnome, after all.

I love the idea of the new monk class.  I’m a sucker for hybrid classes, and this one can play healer, tank and dps (I’m hoping all at once!).

I’m looking forward to new talent system.  From what I gather, instead of choosing a particular talent tree, we’ll be able to take one talent from a choice of three every 15 levels.   I’m hoping that these will be strong, distinctive talents which will change the way we play.   What excites me is that it looks as if we aren’t limited.   We can choose any of the three talents.   Whether those talents will match current talent trees, I don’t know, but I’m imagining that, for example, my druid might be able to choose a top of the tree healing talent even though she’d been choosing balance talents all along.

This sounds great for soloing.   The monk, for instance, might take dps talents to solo, but throw in a couple of tanking or healing talents for survivablity.   I have no idea how it will play out in groups, but it would be fascinating if it meant they could run with a mixture of hybrids and jack-of-all-trades, instead of dedicated healers, tanks and dpsers.  How fun and challenging would that be?

Thirdly, it looks gorgeous.  After Jade Empire, I’m just in the mood for settings like this.

And yet, presumably, it will still play on a creaky old PC.

Mists of Pandaria

Paladining and kicking

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paladin (plural paladins)

  1. A heroic champion (especially a knightly one).
  2. A defender or advocate of a noble cause. (A defender of faith).
  3. Any of the twelve Companions of the court of Emperor Charlemagne.

I’m not sure what sort of cause my paladin is defending (I’m not a lore person), but it looks like I’m back in the tank business again.

While waiting for Cataclysm, I had been happily playing a priest and enjoying the relatively short dungeon queues.  But the itch to tank  was too strong and I had another look at my warrior.  I redid her talents and queued for a dungeon, and … found I’d forgotten how to play.   Somehow we got through, thanks to a nice group who didn’t rush me, but I realised that I should start at the beginning again and relearn how to tank.   I didn’t fancy another warrior, so I said hello to a four year old level 2 blood elf paladin.

Learning as a tank is great, because of the short queues for dungeon finder.  Every time I get a new ability, I have the chance to try it out straight away.   And, dare I say it?  Tanking seems to be fairly easyish when you’re always equipped with nice dungeon drops (my warrior used to do solo questing and queue every now and then.  My paladin has barely seen any of the world beyond Orgrimmar), and when the healer has heirlooms.

Protection paladins seem to be well designed to survive.  If I notice the healer is having difficulty keeping up, I can help by keeping myself up.  I really noticed this yesterday, when the healer left a group for Blackrock prison as soon as they arrived.    The group were happy to carry on regardless, with my paladin acting as both tank and healer.  We completed the dungeon and did another boss, and would have kept going if we’d had time.   The funny thing was that I really enjoyed the challenge.

You’d think that, given that my character can tank and heal, that their dps wouldn’t be great (my warrior’s wasn’t), but I often seem to top the dps meters, even though I’m not deliberately trying to do a lot of damage (except to create more threat).

I’ve also tried solo-ing parts of dungeons.   Sometimes the group has completed the part needed for the loot bag and left, leaving me free to explore.   I’ve found that, yet again, a protection paladin does very well at soloing dungeons, even sometimes (to my utter amazement) if they’re below the level of the mobs.   That’s another really fun thing to do.   The lovely thing about soloing, is that there’s time to stop and think and plan.   Those areas which are more challenging, where lots of mobs attack at once, aren’t a problem for a solo player.  I just use the ancient technique of pulling them round corners in small groups.   It’s what we used to do, all those years ago at the start of World of Warcraft, and it still works – it’s just that if there’s a group, there’s more of a rush, and because wipes are so rare, risks can be taken.  I love pulling the mobs to where I want them.  I wish I could do it in groups, but I’ve come to realise that the groups won’t stand for it.

The rudeness ratio is still much the same – just not enough to make me stop playing.   Sticks and stones, eh?   I’ve noticed that the tank gets the blame almost as much as the healer.  I remember being frustrated in one group.   They didn’t give me a chance to get aggro, and pulled a mob off me.  Not usually a problem, but with slowing spells, I was having difficulty getting to the mob to get the aggro back and took too long to notice that I wasn’t being healed.   Nobody tried to run the mob back to me, and I ended up dying, being hit in the back by the casters behind me.   The healer apologised and said that they had computer problems and hadn’t been able to heal.   It was possibly partially my fault for not noticing and self healing, but then I’d been told off for self-healing before so I tend to let the healer get on with it.   But the group said that the healer was healing fine, and it was my fault, so they kicked me.   I still have to work that one out (how could the healer have been doing fine, when I wasn’t getting healed and they’d explained why?   And why didn’t the dpsers help, if there was a problem?).   It’s very frustrating not having a chance to answer back when you’re kicked!  (At least, I assume I was kicked.  I was suddenly no longer in the group).

Sometimes the “kick” option seems to be overused.  I almost never vote to kick, although often the person will be kicked anyway (I presume it only needs a majority vote).   I think that it’s possible to carry “bad” players, to continue for a while to see if disconnected players come back, etc.   I suppose I have the luxury of getting straight into dungeons, whereas people who have waited a long time (one told me that his average wait was 40 minutes) do get frustrated more easily.

But let’s look at that situation again, in terms of fault.    Now, I don’t claim to be a great player or even a good player.   I think I have an idea of what my role is, and when to use which ability.   However, I don’t have quick reactions, I use a mouse to click on my toolbar (I’m sure I should be using the keyboard, but if I do, I hit the wrong keys too often) and sometimes I find the screen is too busy for me to see what’s going on.  I freely admit that I can make mistakes (and I don’t mind other people making mistakes).  In this case, three of us went wrong.   I didn’t create enough threat at the beginning.   The healer didn’t heal.  The DPS pulled a mob and instead of bringing it back, kept it away.

My fault.  I didn’t get enough threat.   I ran into the group, targeted a caster and used my threat-generating abilities.   A melee mob was pulled off, and I tried to chase after it, using my taunt.   I accept that I didn’t generate enough threat, but I’m not sure how to get more right at the beginning.   Maybe I should have targetted the melee mob instead of one of the casters?  I don’t think so.   I’m not sure if I could have created any more threat than I had already done with the abilities I had, so although that might have been the cause of the problem, it wasn’t my fault.   However, there were things I could have done differently.   Perhaps I should have let the DPS keep the mob he pulled, and concentrate on keeping my health up.   That would have worked.   I could also have set a skull on my target before I ran in and that might have meant that I had a little more threat on the mob the DPS had gone for.  (That would only help if I did it in advance).

The healer’s fault.  The healer said it was his fault, because he had lagged.  Again, although that was a major cause of the problem, it wasn’t actually the healer’s fault as there was nothing he could have done.  Perhaps if he knew there were going to be problems, he could have warned me in advance and I could have self-healed as much as I could.

The DPS’s fault.   The DPS guy didn’t seem to feel he had any fault at all.   However, he pulled one of the mobs that I was trying to build up threat on, meaning that I had to stop attacking, couldn’t use my AoE skills and had to try to get threat back from that one mob.   DPS overall went down (as I wasn’t attacking but trying to run towards his mob through a slowing spell), my health went down (because I was being hit in the back by the caster mobs, who weren’t being attacked), and his health went down (because he was being attacked).  It wasn’t an efficient way to do it.  Perhaps it wasn’t his fault that he pulled the mob in the first place, but there were some things he could have done to minimise damage – in particular, stop attacking the mob and bring it back to me instead of making me neglect the others and run towards him.

Three of us contributed to the cause of the failure.  I’m still not sure why I was considered the most at fault (presumably by the three DPS players – the healer thought it was his fault).   The person who could have done most to save the situation once it was happening was the DPS guy, and he failed to do it.

I think the solution is not to kick, but to all try to work as a team.   We’re supposed to be working together, not against each other.   In that situation, I think it’s best to see what will help “the team”, whether it’s me going for damage reduction rather than dps if the healer is struggling, for instance, or the DPS lowering their dps or taking mobs back to me.   (Sometimes the DPS skills really don’t help the tank to tank!  That group I pulled all together so that I could AoE them?   As they come to me, they get stunned or frozen and spread out.  The worst one is the ability which knocks the mobs back so I can’t attack them and lost threat!  The first time I saw that I thought it was a sneaky new ability of the mobs designed to them more difficult to hit!).

In other news: Cataclysm arrived a week late.  Ordered from Amazon.  Never again.

Paladining and kicking

Download Cataclysm early

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I was excited to see that the Cataclysm expansion was available as a digital download, which starts updating right away.   No trying to do it all on launch day – just upgrade your account and you’re ready to go.

I was less excited when I saw the price.  It’s £29.99 without the box.  My pre-order from Amazon was £17.99ish.   So I’d be paying an extra £12 just so that launch day might be slightly smoother.   It’s not even as if I know yet what I’ll be doing on launch day, and whether I’ll be able to play right away even if I could.   (Some of us have jobs.  And stuff.)

So I was delighted to see this article on WoW Insider.  It explains how to change your files so that Cataclysm is preloaded on launch day.  It’s so simple that even somebody’s mum can do it.

Download Cataclysm early

Hallowed be thy name

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For the first time, I’ve worked towards an achievement, and now have a title: ‘The Hallowed”.   I’ve known for a long time that completing a series of holiday achievements led to a special award of a mount, but it’s only recently that I’ve even looked at the achievement list to see what was required.

For those that don’t play or that didn’t know, achievements were brought into World of Warcraft a couple of years ago.   When you complete certain things (such as reaching level 6o, or falling a certain distance without dying, or learning lots of recipes) there’s a noise and a sign comes up, and your achievement can be seen in guild chat and by the people around you.  I heap scorn on these pointless “achievements”.  And yet, I feel a slight thrill when I hear that noise and the sign comes up, as if I’d just won my 10p back on a fruit machine.

A few of the achievements do actually lead to a bigger reward than that, such a title.  There are some meta-achievements, which involved completing a series of other series of achievements (yes, I did mean to say that, but couldn’t think of a better way to do it).  A biggie is achievement “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been”, which is awarded once you’ve completed a series of holiday achievements (which are themselves made up of lesser achievements.  Phew).  It’s a biggie, because you get an actual sooper dooper mount as a reward, and according to what I’ve read, ownership of that mount will now grant the riding skill for it (meaning that you get free uber riding skill, instead of paying thousands of gold).

I was edging myself mentally towards doing this achievement at Brewfest, but didn’t really set my mind to it and ended up completing all but the “Brew of the month” achievement.  So the earliest I could finish the Long Strange Trip achievement would be by next September.  And meanwhile, I’ll have to log in and get the achievements for all the festivals in between.

Which means, of course, that I will have to pay a sub every time a festival comes up.  Clever, eh?  I’ve always been a very casual player, sometimes subscribing for months at a time, but more often just purchasing the odd month here and there.  Now that I’ve started working towards the mount, I know that any time I miss a festival I’ll be extending the time until I get it.   Now that I think of it, it’s a fiendishly clever marketing strategy.

Actually getting the achievement this month was a bit of a grind – something I was trying to avoid.   I had to log in to my “main” character every hour when I could, to talk to an innkeeper.   I queued for the Headless Horseman every day.  I did the quests up in Southshore and Tirisfal.  I went round a list of inns, collecting sweeties from candy pumpkins.

That was the part that I thought would be the most boring.  But it wasn’t.  For a start, I could do other things while flying between inns.  But most of all, I know that Azeroth is going to change, come Cataclysm, and there was something nostalgic and bittersweet about revisiting my old haunts – this time with good graphics!   I think I had forgotten just how big the world is.   My warlock was one of my very first characters, all those years ago, and I found that some of the world had changed even since my last visit.  The butcher, Dirk, in Gadgetzan seemed pleased to see me again and had a quest for me.  I found that I’d explored all of Stonetalon mountains except the part with the Alliance inn.   It was early days back then and I had no idea how to get there, so had approached from the Barrens, trying to avoid a horde outpost.   Theramore was no longer the scary, questless bleakness that I had run through with my level 20 warlock on one of her class quests (another thing of the past).  Oh, how I remember arriving in the Barrens and seeing huge dinosaurs for the first time!  Then later, looking for the flight path in Ratchet, without success (there wasn’t one).   Then sneaking past a horde outpost (as per usual) to get to Ashenvale, not realising that it could be approached from Darkshore.    It was a pain travelling in those days, and I never had any money, and was clueless.  But the sense of adventure and exploration was unbeatable.

Of course, I’ve been levelling a shaman so have been returning to old haunts anyway.  But somehow it was different going back with my little warlock, the first of my characters to explore those dangerous, difficult areas.  Goodbye Old Azeroth.  You will be remembered fondly.

Hallowed be thy name

Playing a DPS class with no DPS

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I admit to having too many alts.   I reached the alt cap on World of Warcraft (I think it might have been 50).    I can’t wait for Cataclysm, although I’m going to have to delete some so that I can play in the new starting areas.    I love levelling.   I love starting areas.   I love trying out new classes.

So my warrior tank keeps getting neglected when I suddenly get an urge to play on some of my other alts.  It’s so confusing.  I thought it might be fun to practice playing my warlock so that I could give a go at playing a random dungeon at level 80.   I’d left her in Icecrown (what a miserable place that is), and set off to smash some skulls.   What a joy after playing my warrior!   The kills were so quick.   I felt uberpowerful.   I was all set to queue up as DPS on the dungeon finder.

Then I decided to have a look at recount.  Oh dear!   My damage was rubbish.   I had read that 900 was a terrible amount of damage at level 80, and yet I was only hitting that occasionally.  Usually I was about 800 and something.   Also my damage didn’t really kick in until the end, when my dots added up.    I could imagine that running through a dungeon with quick kills it would be even less than 800 – more like the 500 or so it is nearer the beginning of a fight.

Now, I suppose I don’t have very good gear.   It’s all quest rewards apart from my goggles (engineering), and I think my robe was bought from the Kaluak.    I thought that improving my gear might make a difference.   So off I fired up my Ultra-Safe Transporter to Gadgetzan and flew up to Darnassus to hit the Auction House.    I couldn’t see much that I wanted at a low price, but I bought a purple robe, and blue shoulders, and then some gems to put in them.   I also bought some glyphs, some spellpower thread for my trousers, and some spellpower elixir, then went back to test it all out.

It wasn’t much different with the glyphs and the new clothes.   I ended up switching back to the blue turtle robe over the purple gemmed robe, but whatever I did didn’t help much.  I fiddled around with the order of my spells, tried switching shadowbolts for drain life and so on.   Not much difference.  The one thing I haven’t tried yet is the spellpower elixir and food.

Much as I love the dungeon finder, I wish there was a way to queue up as a ‘noob’.   I could try queueing only for the lowest level dungeons where my lack of dps wouldn’t be felt so much, but I don’t really want to do a level 70 dungeon at level 80.   What I want, what I really, really want is to do a level 80 dungeon with a group of equally bad players in equally unimpressive gear.  It would be an interesting challenge, and I wouldn’t feel as if I was being boosted.

As an aside, back in the old days, I didn’t used to worry too much about DPS on my warlock.  I thought of the warlock as the crowd control class or the utility class or the bag of tricks class.    I didn’t do huge damage, but I could soulstone, healthstone, summon, seduce, buff, debuff, dot, fear and if needed, tank (with my voidwalker).   Being an engineer, I could also whip out a shrink ray, exploding sheep or mechanical harvest reaper when needed.   (The shrink ray was great!).   I didn’t really want to dps – I wanted to do all the other fun things.

Playing a DPS class with no DPS

Tanking woes

somebodysmum, , , , , , Leave a comment

Although I play my tank like somebody’s mum, I do like to read up about it and have some idea of what I’m doing.   I’ve read a few guides to tanking, but there is a bit in the middle that’s missing!  What I mean is that there is plenty on written on the very basics of tanking (i.e. your job is to attract aggro and  take damage, to protect the group and provide a single main target for the healer) .  Then there is a lot written for people who already know how to tank but want to  fine tune the details in the endgame (Elitist Jerks, I’m looking at you).    But for people who understand the very basics, but are not at (or never going to get to) end game, there isn’t so much advice.  I am muddling my way through, and it’s leading to some mistakes.

I’ve had a few comments about my lack of damage.  I tend to be between the healers and the others in damage, at the same level.    Other people with warrior alts have pointed out that they normally are high up the list, if not topping it.   I wasn’t terribly worried about my lack of damage, as I had been mainly concentrating on taking damage, not dishing it out.  In fact, I’d expected to be just where I was on the table, below the dpsers, who are the damage dealers.   But possibly I should be doing more damage to get more threat.   At the moment, I am not dying in instances, so I must have about enough protection for the healers to keep up.   I maybe need to think about sacrificing some protection for damage dealing – for instance, replacing stamina with strength.

I’ve found out that if I’m a higher level than my group mates it’s easy to keep aggro.   If I’m a lower level, I keep losing it.   That’s probably because at a lower level I do less damage, and keep missing.

I’m also learning about the pace of these dungeons.   As I said earlier, the days of planning and mana breaks have gone.  I’m now charging ahead, trying to get the first hits in.   I’m still not fast enough as sometimes I’m running over to the mobs while they’re running back to a ranged player.   My taunt is single target, so it’s a pain getting a group of them to focus on me after they’ve gone for one of the other players.   Speed definitely helps, and if I can get in quickly enough I have a couple of aoe skills that I can use while keeping the group together.  That works well for me, but not so well for other players who are trying to crowd control them.   Oops.

Finally, no matter how much I read and learn, I think I’m always going to struggle because I use my keyboard and mouse like somebody’s mum, if not somebody’s gran.   I’ll call it granny typing.   I slip about when I try to use the number keys and get the wrong ones.   The mouse seems to stick and the buttons are too small to press.  I’m not sure if they’ve worked or not when I’ve pressed them.  There is too much on the screen and I can’t see what’s going on.   I can’t work out who’s attacking who, or not immediately.   I find it difficult to pick out the mobs from the players.   Tab targeting gets me the wrong mobs, and clicking on the mob targets a player instead.  This is one of the reasons I usually avoid mêlée classes, because I find it easier to be able to stand back at range.   And it’s one of the reasons I like healing – because the players are easier to target than the mobs!

Tanking woes